1997 Echézeaux Grand Cru

Following a cool maceration lasting up to a week at the start of the harvest but more like three or four days for late-arriving fruit, the '98s spent anywhere from 28 to 37 days on their skins, with fermentation temperatures reaching as high as 40oC. Crop levels were small, and the wines have good color, said winemaker Jacques Lardiere. But following late malos that mostly ended in September, added Lardiere, "the wines are just beginning to mature, because no polymerization of tannins takes place until after the malos." Or, as director Pierre-Henri Gagey put it in November, "the wines are now going through a densification." "It's just a matter of time," said Lardiere. "Some of the '98s will be quite good, even if the high points are not as high as those of the last three vintages."x000D x000D x000D x000D In 1997, Jadot harvested its domain holdings late, allowing the grapes to lose some of their excess water following the early September rains. These '97s offer almost magical freshness of fruit for wines so rich and ripe; few of the top bottlings from Jadot's own vineyards show the roasted quality that characterizes so many wines from this vintage. Jacques Lardiere stepped up to the plate in '97 and whacked the ball about 500 feet.

"Why, with the ripest fruit since 1947, and perfectly healthy grape skins, isn't 1997 a great vintage?" I asked winemaker Jacques Lardiere. "It is," he said simply, and then proceeded to show me a set of wines with the headspinning richness of the best Burgundies made in the '40s and '50s. "The problem in Burgundy, though, is that people have become too technological," Lardiere explained. "They lack confidence in the balance of their fruit; they're always thinking in terms of controlling their material, of bringing the vintage back into balance. And then there were the growers who picked too early, before the enzymes and polyphenols were ripe enough to permit easy extraction of color and flavor. There was too much water in the berries at the beginning of the harvest; later picking brought a concentration of sugars and acids." x000D x000D Jadot took maximum advantage of the great ripeness of '97 by harvesting late. According to Lardiere, the house was the last to finish picking on the Cote de Nuits, bringing in the last pinot noir after the chardonnay. Lardiere then did his normal very long cuvaison which lasted 33 to 36 days in '97. (At Jadot new state-of-the-art winery, the new destemmer allows a higher percentage of berries to go into the fermenter uncrushed.) Lardiere is confident that 1997 is an epic vintage of extraordinary richness that will last in bottle for decades. In fact, he not at all convinced that the '96s will age longer, due to the larger size of the crop in the earlier year (in some crus, Jadot did a saignee of as much as 20% in '96). Lardiere is especially high on the '97s from Gevrey Chambertin, which feature the ripest fruit from those parcels he has ever seen. Crop levels were down sharply in '97; only Clos Vougeot and Corton Pougets produced "full" yields. Tasting here in January was a bit of a challenge, as the wines were at various stages of their evolutions. Most of the Jadot '97s underwent very late malolactic fermentations, and many of them had been racked ("essentially for the first time," according to Lardiere") during the four to six weeks prior to my late January visit. The difference in quality between the wines from the domain's own vines (i.e., harvested and made by Jadot) and those vinified by Jadot's numerous suppliers has never been more apparent.