The 2008 Meursault Les Santenots is powerful yet balanced in a broad, expansive style that caresses the palate with tons of rich, honeyed fruit. Lighter, floral notes appear on the finish, adding brightness to what is otherwise a fairly masculine style of Meursault. All of the elements work nicely here. Anticipated maturity: 2013+. Francois Bitouzet showed me a wide range of wines during my visit to the estate in June, 2011. Unfortunately most of the 2010s were still going through malo and were hard to read, but I did have chance to go through the 2008s, which I have included here. The whites are aged for 12 months in oak, 20-25% new. The village wines are then racked into steel for a further 4-6 months, while the premier crus are racked back into barrel. The extended aging in oak for some of the wines and use of batonnage are among the factors that give these whites a fair amount of textural richness and depth, even in cooler, more reticent vintages such as 2008. New oak is between 20-25%. The 2009s were bottled in February 2011. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990