2007 Puligny Montrachet Champ Canet

The Sauzet 2007 Puligny-Montrachet Champ Canet – from 57 year old vines – is pungent and mineral in character from its nose of crushed stone, white pepper, salt spray, and lemon zest to its persistently juicy, gripping, vibratory finish. Along the way, brown spices and peach kernel add piquancy. There is urgency and an athletic leanness to this super-concentrate that will probably relax with another year or two: Boudot opines that with rare exceptions such as 2006 this bottling is never youthfully forward. Here is another candidate for 8-10 years in bottle. I paused before deciding not to add “promising,” since age-ability assessments at this address – as at so many others – cannot fail to be colored by disappointingly precipitant maturation in bottle during the past 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.) Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802