2011 Montrachet Grand Cru

Although all of the producers I visited in June and July had their 2011s comfortably resting in bottle, the whites were still in barrel at Lucien Le Moine, where long elevage on the lees is the rule. The 2011s are striking for their transparency. A number of these whites are still very raw, so the additional time in barrel is going to be critical. As always, the Le Moine wines are quite rich and need considerable air, especially if they are opened young. Sadly, there is no Criots in 2011. This is another set of gorgeous wines from proprietors Mounir Saouma and Rotem Brakim.

Mounir Saouma noted that there are similarities between the 2011 and 2010 white Burgundies.But the 2011s, despite hot weather during the harvest, are not as ripe as the '10s, he told me, adding that most of his 2011s were chaptalized "for the only time since 1999."A problem in 2011 was that because so many wineries were warm in November, a lot of wines finished their malos before Christmas.Not so in Saouma's cellar, where he turned on the A.C., added 10 milligrams of SO2, and drastically slowed down both the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations.He kept all the wines on their lees and did not make another sulfur addition until two weeks before my visit at the beginning of June; he did not plan to rack the wines until August.I have also provided notes on a number of Saouma's 2010s, which were bottled between August and October of 2012.Saouma describes 2010 as "a concentrated vintage that made elegant wines, never heavy.The 2008s and 2005s will be more locked up in the early years than the 2010s."