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Virgile Lignier on the 2004 vintage: "[It was] absolutely necessary to control yields because if you didn't, it was impossible to have good phenolic ripeness. The weather, particularly in July and August, was marginal and if the vines were carrying heavy crop loads, there just was not enough heat and luminosity to ripen the seeds and phenolics. In fact, the beginning of August was so bad and we had zero color in the grapes that we decided to go back into the vineyards and do a second green harvest to try and help the vines kick start the ripening process. By the end of August, we had a rosé color and reasonably good sugars but completely unripe phenolics. I was wondering how we were going to make wine at all. Thankfully, September was magnificent and you could see a huge difference in the ripeness levels between the fruit from the vines where we dropped a lot of grapes and those grapes that I bought. We sorted two times, once in the vineyards and again at the cuvérie to get rid of unripe and oidium-affected berries. In fact, I threw out two-thirds of what I bought because of problems with either ripeness or condition. It was also very important to control extraction because I wanted to avoid making another 1988 with excessively hard tannins. I punched down aggressively at the beginning only and then afterward, just once a day. The malos were very slow to start and then took a long time to finish. In fact, they didn't even start here until July and only finished in October, which is amazing. It was a tightrope as I don't like using SO2 when the wines were in malo but you can't leave them unprotected for that long so that undoubtedly contributed to the length and slowness of the malolactic fermentations." As I have commented before but wish to reemphasize, Lignier's wines have gone from strength to strength as it's easy to see that he is growing in confidence with each vintage. The style is one of extreme purity and understatement and will appeal most to those who enjoy classically styled wines. In particular, check out the Faconnières and Chenevery. The present plan is to bottle the '04s without fining or filtration. Note: Lignier has a small négociant activity and the wines are sold under the Virgile Lignier name. -- Allen Meadows of Burghound
Snapshot
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Country
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France |
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Region
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Burgundy |
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Appellation
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Morey-Saint-Denis |
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Color
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Red |
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Still / Sparkling
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Still |
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Special Features
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Sustainable Agriculture |
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Bottle Size
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Full Bottle (750 ml) |
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Varieties
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Pinot Noir |
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