Recently racked when I tasted it, Jobard’s 2007 Meursault Blagny La Piece Sous le Bois offered a long, lean, impressively penetrating, if aromatically restrained account of its self. Chalk, salt and citrus tinged with piquant toasted grain and fruit pit are the familiar building blocks here, along with high-toned herbal pungency; and the combination of this rocky, high-elevation site’s typical character with the vintage’s character make for a stimulating brightness that some tasters will find audacious and an underlying firmness and finishing emphasis on salt and stone that some will find austere. Compared with this wine, the corresponding Tillets is practically user-friendly! Jobard believes that – like others of his 2007s – it needs four years to reconcile itself with its acidity. I’d say it should be fascinating to follow for at least 6-8 years in total. Antoine Jobard’s avowed upholding of his father’s “classic style” – enhanced by late bottling but with exclusively passive lees contact – extends to his preference for 2007 over the obviously richer, lower-acid 2005 and 2006 vintages, and his analogy with 2004 “except finer, less vegetal, and straighter” is born out by parallel tasting. While these 2007s display the brightness of acids, strong mineral cast, and energy that are hallmarks of 2007, few white Burgundy collections of the vintage were as tight and restrained last summer as was Jobard’s. He began picking already on September 3 and finished in only a week, in large part to guard acidity, although his must weights were already ample, and the finished wines – certain of which were lightly chaptalized – typically in the upper 12s in percent alcohol.Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 524-1524; also imported by Martine’s Wines, Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400