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Louis Jadot Gevrey-Chambertin Premier Cru Clos St. Jacques(2003)

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Winery:: Louis Jadot
Varietal:: Lenoir Grape
Region:: France > Burgundy > Gevrey Chambertin
Type:: Red Wine
User Tags:: lenoir grape, red grape, fruit, oak - heavy, woody, herbaceous, berry, cabernet sauvignon, dense, phenolic

US $120.32

Have winemaker's notes?

Burghound

Issue 18, Apr 01, 2005

90/100

May 2008

Jacques Lardière, winemaker and technical director for Jadot, believes that in every vintage, it's necessary to get one or two critical things absolutely right. If you manage to do these 2 or 3 things right, everything else is just icing on the cake. In 2003, he stressed that it was necessary to pick late and macerate long. We didn't start picking until the 1st of September and by then, it was 10° C cooler than only 4 days earlier. There were several small rainstorms that did a lot of good in partially rebalancing the grapes though it was still necessary to carefully excise the dried berries read more...

during the harvest. The second thing that waiting did was to give us riper phenolics and this was the key to being able to macerate for up to 18 days. I know that in some vintages, like 1997, that we have macerated for as long as 30+ days but 18 days was plenty in '03 because we had a such a high solid to liquid ratio. This was due to the fact that the skins were so thick and there wasn't much juice in the berries in the first place. We are well equipped to chill and I lowered the musts to between 15 and 16° C and then I let the temperatures rise naturally and to relatively high levels. The musts were clean as there was no rot and the phenolics were ripe so what is wrong with extracting excellent raw materials? It will enable the '03s to age for a long, long time. During the initial 5 to 6 days, I didn't touch the solids but after that we began punching down as we usually do. At first, the wines tasted like Grenache but bit by bit during the élevage, not only did the pinot character begin to return but it's important to point out that 2003 is not devoid of terroir, in fact far from it! And one other key point, I absolutely did not acidify our wines and absolutely hate the concept to begin with. There was a bit more new oak than normal as the wines are so dense that they will easily absorb it. Lardière also stressed that they bought almost nothing in 2003, noting that prices were high, quality was mixed and we just didn't see the need to pay up for suspect quality. A number of the wines were being prepared for bottling at the time of my late February visit. (Kobrand, Inc., New York, NY; Hatch, Mansfield Agencies, UK). Interestingly, this is also quite ripe but not necessarily any more elegant though there is perhaps slightly better depth of material and certainly better overall purity of expression and intensity, especially on the superbly long, firm and punchy backend. While this is not classic in style, there is so much explosive energy and verve that this may very well surprise to the upside with time in bottle. (hide)

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