2003 Chardonnay Cuvée Alyce

Steve Hansel, a long-time Burgundy aficionado, assured me he does not like making or drinking pinot noir with raisiny notes. He practices minimal intervention-or, as he puts it, "I'm not a winemaker, I'm a wine chaperone"-and he's willing to allow the wines to reduce in barrel. I focused on the current and imminent releases from this winery:the 2004 chardonnays and 2003 pinots. Hansel told me that the grape sugars went up quickly at the end of the 2003 growing season, due in part to the low crop levels that were hanging on the vines. He described his young 2004s as "huge wines, dark and inky, with an unavoidable bit of raisining. "All the 2003s and 2004s here were vinified with wild yeasts.