2008 - Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Champeaux Vieille Vigne, Fourrier

Good bright red. Sappy red cherry, raspberry, minerals and crushed stone on the nose; more pristine than the Cherbaudes. Then suave and juicy in the mouth, with terrific cut and purity to the tangy red berry and mineral flavors. Penetrating and powerful yet at the same time elegant. Fresh, taut, palate-staining fruit needs time to unwind. Still a baby.

The Fourrier 2008 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Champeaux displays marrowy richness along with depth of ripe red and black fruits; smoked meat stock; and a silken texture that are already irresistible. “I see Les Goulots as more Chambolle-like and aloof, and Champeaux as more generous,” remarks Fourrier, and they are playing precisely those roles today, with a winsome hint of peony floral perfume that wafts through this Champeaux enhancing its appeal. This lingers with sedate, layered complexity quite different from the dynamic sense of energy that informs so many of the best 2008s. Jean-Claude Fourrier left no doubt that he viewed 2008 under the aspect of a return to times and conditions he thought his generation would never have to face. “The most important determinant of quality in your range,” in 2008, he asserted, “was how willing you were to sacrifice on the sorting table.” He had only just bottled his 2008s when I tasted them at the end of February – with the exception of two wines that remained in tank, one a Combottes he had just warmed-up in a last ditch effort to push it across the lactic conversion line! “By last October,” he explains, “I was facing the situation that 5 casks out of 7 were at 80% of malic acid and the others at 20%. So you have the choice either to heat your cellar, or to make the – for me, painful – decision to bring the wine back together into vat for promoting natural inoculation. Otherwise, I would have been waiting until April, and I can hardly even consider two full years in cask for my wines To be honest, I hated my ‘08s for the first 14 months.” Primary fermentation also took place this year in large part through inoculation by utilizing whichever lots spontaneously kicked-in first as starters, because as Fourrier explained, “I’m not a fan of extended cold maceration, which means adding sulfur,” and with the ambient temperatures at which the 2008 fruit arrived in the press house, it could have taken a long time for many fermentation