From right up against the rocks (just below the En Richard parcel that helps inform his Folatieres), Boudot’s 2007 Chevalier-Montrachet smells pungently and sweetly of lavender, buddleia, heliotrope, and citrus zest. Silken-textured and refined in texture yet positively gripping in its sense of implacable, enervative, vibratory persistence of chalk, citrus oils, white pepper, and herbal-floral concentrates, this superb representation of some of wine’s finest acreage should be worth following for a decade or more, but is another Sauzet 2007 not to be missed young. In Boudot’s view, it’s typical for Chevalier to deliver “the most immediate pleasure” of the Montrachet grand crus. Here you get surfeit of energy and near-indelible pungency as well as of uncannily seductive liquid flowers, yet with lift and supreme elegance.
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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