want to make monsters like the '76s or '83s that had excessive tannins and lacked freshness. It would have been easy to make wines like that and thus I elected to do a very light, relatively fast vinification. And after only two days, the musts were as black as ink as the extraction happened easily and quickly. So, I shortened the cuvaison to 12 days from my normal 16 to 18 and did much less punching down than normal. I was a bit surprised to find that the press wine still had 4 to 5 grams of unfermented sugar as there was a lot millerandage (extremely small and concentrated berries) that didn't get crushed because we did so little punching down. I added some tartaric but not to all the wines and the quantities ranged from 0 to 150 grams per barrel. At first I thought that the '03s were fragile wines that should be bottled early but now after we had completely normal malos, I think I will bottle at the normal period, which is in February and March. None of the wines had been racked at the time of my late October visit but even so, I was particularly struck by how fresh the Méo '03s were even though they are as he describes, e.g. very ripe. (Kermit Lynch, Berkley, CA; Jeanne-Marie de Champs-Domaine et Saveurs for Frederick Wildman, NY and for Boston Wine Company, MA; Berry Brothers & Rudd, Bibendum, Goedhuis & Co, Justerini & Brooks and Richards Walford, all UK). The first wine to be noticeably marked by its wood, framing extremely ripe yet still elegant earthy black berry and raspberry fruit and this is very finely textured despite the firm tannic spine that helps deliver plenty of finishing punch. The slightly warm finish is dusty, mouth coating and lingers in the mouth.
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