Boudot’s 2007 Montrachet represents juice of 50 year old vines that he buys and raises, and I wonder whether to consider the sensational results more a tribute to the inherent quality of this site or to the degree of control he is able to exercise. Musk, daffodil, honeysuckle, lily, nut oils, and brown spices make for a head-turning aromatic display and ally themselves to succulent peach and Persian melon on a silken, palpably thick and dense, yet elegantly-expressive, energy-charged palate. For sheer length, too, this perfectly-proportional wine edges out even the Chevalier-Montrachet. I’m so used to it being the other way around in instances where these two sites can be directly compared that this demonstration of quality amazes me, even allowing for a centuries-long tradition of hype. This ought to be worth following for more than a decade.
Gerard Boudot harvested the majority of his fruit during the first week in September, after what he considered to have been one last, critical week of ripening, and believing that it was more important to retain ripe acidity than go for a bit more potential alcohol. He reports having chaptalized selectively – largely at village level and to a very small degree – but the wines top out below 13% finished alcohol. Boudot did a rigorous selection not, he claimed, to remove rot but to cull any under-ripe berries and bunches. All of his 2007s were bottled by March, 2009 after their having spent 5-6 months assembled in tank, a period of passive watchfulness that is among diverse aspects of Boudot’s regimen to have been adjusted in recent years in response to high incidence of wines from the late ‘90s that displayed excessive oxidization after a half dozen years. The regimen of new oak here, incidentally, is 20-25% for the premier crus (with the exception of a bit more on Combettes), and never stands out as a factor detectable in itself. (The wines of this domaine legally belong to two entities, that of Domaine Etienne Sauzet and the company consisting of Boudot and his wife. In addition fruit is acquired for a few bottlings on long-term contract. I have not attempted to call attention to these differences in my notes, and in fact numerous crus represented here have multiple official owners.)
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