2003 Echézeaux Grand Cru

"Two thousand four was a year not to have a calendar," said Mounir Saouma. "It was necessary to treat the vines when the vines needed it. It was necessary to reduce the crop again in early September. "Saouma took no steps to clean up the lees in the barrels of 2004 wine he purchased, and is aging the wines in all new barrels. "We had very high malic acidity in 2004, the highest since I came to Burgundy," he told me. "But the acids fell with the malolactic fermentation, and the wines became sweet. They have textbook typicity. "The malos were finished when I tasted in November, but only a few barrels had been racked. These 2004s look to be stunning; if I had any concern about this crop of wines, it's that they were almost too succulent 14 months after the harvest.

Mounir Saouma cut back his purchases of white wine in 2003 but not of red, ultimately buying just 50 barrels of wine, down from 65 in 2002.The challenge with the 2003 reds, says Saouma, was to stir the lees and enrich the wines without losing CO2 and sacrificing freshness.Accordingly, he designed a gadget that would push the lees up via an injection of CO2 from the bottom of the barrel, and this technique enabled him to do the equivalent of gentle stirring of the lees until August.Incidentally, Saouma loves Jupille oak from the Berce forest just east of Le Mans, which he describes as "very neutral and fine."He currently uses about 85% Jupille barrels.I would have to say that he's onto something: the wood element is beautifully integrated with the complex soil tones of the Lucien Le Moine 2002s.(Vintus, New York, NY; Chicago Wine Merchants Selections, Chicago, IL; Atherton Wine Imports, Atherton, CA)