1999 Rol Valentin

"We had all the elements of a strong wine in 2001," said proprietor/winemaker Eric Prissette, "but we needed to do a lot of work to get precision and balance." Extraction is softer here than it was even two years ago, and Prissette now has 11 small cuves for his 4.6 hectares of vines - "one cuve for each day of picking, which enables us to harvest with greater precision." Prissette picked his cabernet sauvignon on October 17, keeping only the equivalent of 17 hectoliters per hectare and eliminating the less-ripe fruit. This is one of several right-bank wines that strike me as especially Burgundian in character.

Proprietor Eric Prissette, formerly a professional soccer player, purchased a number of new open-top Taransaud fermenters for the 2000 vintage, some as tiny as 1,000 liters, to harvest and vinify with greater precision. (The various lots in 2000 were concentrated via saignee, by as little as 5% to as much as 20%.) This new wine (the first serious commercial release was 1998, although Prissette started here in 1994) is made mostly from merlot, but there about 15% cabernet sauvignon and franc. Prissette now owns 4-1/2 hectares: two around the house, with sandy soils similar to those of La Dominique, and the rest in the hamlet of Bel-Air in St. Etienne de Lisse, close to the new parcel recently bought by Jean-Luc Thunevin and now being used to produce Valandraud. Prissette told me he looks for "precision of flavor, soft tannins, tendresse: "I don't do a lot of extraction, and the wines are racked only two times prior to bottling." The 2000 received 200% new oak treatment, as it was vinified in the new fermenters and then racked into new barriques, 60% of which are from Taransaud.

This estate, with 7 hectares of sandy soil and 2.3 on clay and chalk, dropped half its crop in the late summer of '99 in order to ripen the rest. The harvest was then especially tricky, consisting of five passages extending over a period of five weeks. Some hailed-on fruit was picked on September 9 but has not yet been included in the blend. Cabernet sauvignon was harvested until October 14.