1996 Charmes Chambertin

This dark ruby-colored wine has a delightful nose of both sugar-coated blueberries and blackberries that gives way to a huge burst of candied red, purple, and black fruits. This harmonious and refined, yet concentrated and full-bodied wine is plump, velvety-textured, and complex. Flavors of soft milk chocolate and cassis liqueur are found in its seductive, succulent, and silky-smooth finish. Drink this gem between 2002 and 2009.Bravo! Vincent Geantet, a young man who appears to be in his mid-thirties, produces seductive, supple, flavorful, and immensely pleasurable wines. His wines (out of bottle) are filled with exuberant and lush fruit and are seemingly ready to drink. They are aged in one-third new oak (from a multitude of sources) with a heavy reliance on first year barrels, and are neither fined nor filtered. Geantet informed me that all had been bottled on January 7 by an itinerant bottling truck. Importer: A Daniel Johnnes Selection, Jeroboam Imports, New York, NY; tel (212) 374-9415 and Kysela Pere et Fils, Fran Kysela, Winchester, VA; tel (540) 722-9228.