1999 Echézeaux Grand Cru

Winemaker Jacques Lardiere characterizes the 2000 vintage as "soft, pretty, accessible." He actually increased the percentage of new oak in 2000, though he described this approach as risky. "We use more new oak on a so-so vintage than a rich one. But it to connect the wine's phenols, to keep the wine alive, rather than to add something. We also needed to do longer macerations, typically 26 to 28 days but sometimes longer, and the result was that we got sweeter tannins." Lardiere uses mostly Nevers oak; he finds Allier too strong and believes that this type of oak works better in vintages in which the macerations are short. He told me he did little saignee because Jadot had already eliminated so much less-than-perfect fruit on its table de trie Lardiere, well placed to comment on vintage differences across appellations owing to the great range of wines he makes, feels that 2000 favored the villages of Nuits-Saint-Georges and Gevrey-Chambertin.

Jacques Lardiere did very long macerations in '97, '98 and '99-typically 28 to 36 days in '99, though due to the sheer size of the crop he had to speed up the maceration of a few of his smaller wines by punching down the cap more frequently. Although Jadot made the full allowable yields in many of its holdings (in some instances, production was three times the yield of '98, according to Lardiere), the best cru bottlings will have no problem aging for 30 years, Lardiere claims. "We had similar grape sugars to '98 and slightly lower acidity, but there are plenty of tannins to compensate for the lower acids," he explained. "It a group of wines that will be pretty after the bottling but age well." Lardiere routinely eliminated about 20% of the juice via saignee following the '99 harvest; he is confident that this technique for concentrating the must removes only water.