Notes:

Producer note: Etienne de Montille told me that 2001 required "an enormous amount of triage work and a careful touch with respect to extraction. We elected to destem 100%, pressed more lightly than usual, did fewer punch downs, shortened by two days the cuvaison period and even went to the effort to remove from the must any dry skins that we saw. All of these things helped but the biggest impact was our decision not to add back any of our press wine, which was much more tannic than usual and we were afraid that it would imbalance the final blend." He went on to observe that the hail retarded the phenolic ripeness by fully 15 days and thus the domaine delayed the harvest as long as it could but it wasn't possible to fully make up all of the lost time. As a consequence, "we didn't rack at all in an effort to permit the wines to enrich themselves on the lees." The wines are scheduled to be bottled in March and April with no fining or filtration with the exception of the Taillepieds which will be fined. In other news, 2003 will see two news wines chez de Montille as the domaine purchased 2.5 ha combined of two Beaune 1ers: Les Perrires and Les Sizies.

Tasting note: Wonderfully expressive with rich, open, elegant grapefruit and peach aromas that already display some mature fruit notes are followed by full-bodied, intense, pure flavors underpinned by an intense minerality and fine finishing intensity. There is good depth of extract and solid power and the only nit is that this does not appear, at least not at present, to have the superb fruit/acid balance of the 2002. A very pretty wine built for the medium term though it will be approachable early, at least by the standards of this wine. Burghound 90 points