From conspicuously high above Chassagne and the core Vergers vineyard and, like his Baudines, picked near the end of harvest, Pillot's 2007 Chassagne-Montrachet Les Vergers Clos Saint-Marc soars from the glass with grapefruit, iris, buddleia, tangerine, red currant, wood smoke and a pungent whiff of white pepper. Superbly concentrated yet elegant, vivacious, and crystal clear in its interchange of citrus and berries with salt, pepper, chalk and crustacean essence, this displays grand cru class. Satiny in texture, it escapes any sense of austerity even given its brightness and mineral cast. All of this concentrated and explosive flavor, Pillot is keen to point out, originates in fruit of barely over 12% natural alcohol (although chaptalized to 13.2%), just one of several features here that put me a bit in mind of great Riesling. Alas, there are only four barrels, but should you be lucky enough to acquire some of this, I would recommend trying to stretch it out over a decade.
Jean-Marc Pillot began picking on September 1 but then took a few days break, in the belief that sufficient ripeness just wasn't there yet, and in the end patience and careful deliberation was necessary (but, unlike in 2006, possible as well) if one were going to achieve optimal results. His fruit harbored significantly less malic than tartaric acidity (the converse of 2008), Pillot claims, -which is normal, because there was a long season but with no hot spells to burn off the tartaric acidity. My malos went quickly and I ended up with very, very low pHs, and wines that are very citric.- The typical must was chaptalized by close to a degree, to finished alcohols of around 13%, and the typical wine received around 1/3 new oak and some batonnage in its upbringing. As with his 2006s, these wines (excepting those of three low-echelon appellations) were racked into tank after a year, and spent seven months there, in part to permit passive clarification and because, as Pillot puts it, -this year the wines were really hermetic for a long time;- but also to verify their stability and thus in principle allow for adjustments of sulfur and guarantee their potential in bottle.
Imported by Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990
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