2010 Vosne-Romanée Les Suchots 1er Cru

Pascal Marchand, whose new business partner also owns Tawse Winery in Ontario, made 330 barrels of red wine in 2010, about one-third of which was Bourgogne. He is able to choose the harvest dates with most of his grape suppliers and in 2010 he was worried about waiting too long to pick. "In 2008 we could wait to harvest, and we had more phenolic ripeness, and very good acidity," he explained. "The rot established itself early, but the temperatures in September remained cold and the rot didn't spread. But in 2010 we really couldn't afford to wait. The rot had developed later, and there was less of it than in 2008, but it was still developing when we picked. We had good sugar levels in the grapes but I had the feeling at the time that the phenolic ripeness wasn't great." Mostly for this reason he did a very soft vinification, limiting the number of pigeages to just two for each cuvee and also cutting back on pumpovers. Most of the finished 2010s will be about 13% or 13.1% alcohol following a half-degree or less of chaptalization.