2004 Echézeaux Grand Cru

Jacques Lardiere conducted his usual vinification in 2005, which included 12 days of post-fermentation maceration. According to Lardiere, there's a lot of great wine in 2005 and a lot of good wine. The vintage as a whole is characterized by "very strong tannins," he said. "The wines need a feminine quality, and they need to have sufficient energy. And of course they need time. Some winemakers rushed their wines, manipulated them, rather than showing patience." On the subject of energy, I notice that I frequently score the finished Jadot wines at the high end of my initial projected ranges-a testament to Lardiere's uncanny ability to bring the inherent energy of the soil into the bottle.

Almost predictably, Jacques Lardiere took a somewhat different approach from the majority of his fellow winemakers in Burgundy in 2004. For starters, he used more new oak than usual in 2004:normally 50% and up for the crus. Lardiere noted that the low temperature of Jadot's cellar gave many of the wines a rather hard tannic impression in November; and of course some of the malos were very late here. "The wines will be silkier than what we see now," is the way he put it. Lardiere carried out what he described as his "normal maceration," which means 16 to 24 days of total time on the skins-or a good 8 to 10 days less than a "big year" like '99.