2006 Nuits St Georges Les Poisets

Deep ruby-red. Complex, ripe aromas of black cherry, bitter chocolate and smoked meat. Rich, dense, ripe and chocolatey, with a creamy concentration of flavor suggesting small berries. Still a bit of medicinal reserve here. Finishes broad, dry and long, with palate-saturating fruit. Should make a strong village wine.

From 70-year-old vines Lachaux says are especially prone to millerandage, and which run in a strip from Cailles to the route nationale, the Arnoux 2006 Nuits-St.-Georges Les Poisets smells of burley tobacco and a bittersweet concentration of herbal essences that put me in mind of Morey. A liqueur-like concentration of black fruits – albeit without any superficial sense of sweetness – is backed by dark chocolate on a smooth, subtly viscous and glycerin-rich palate, and stony, chalky suggestions that well up in the long finish lend a hint of austerity, yet there is enlivening fresh fruit acidity. This unremittingly darkly-concentrated bottling is an impressive candidate for 6-8 years of freshness, 'though I would be inclined not to revisit it before 2011 or 2012. ||Pascal Lachaux – who subscribes to the prevalent notion that this vintage reflects elements of 2000 and 2002 – is one of the very few red Burgundy growers (Rouget another) whose 2006s strike me as outclassing their 2005s. It's possible that his having had a prior vintage to become accustomed to the opportunities afforded by his spacious new, gravity flow cellar contributed to his success this year. And it's of course also possible that I have under- or over-rated one of these vintages. Lachaux – who defends 2005 as one of his best-ever collections – concurs in finding each 2006 typical for its site as well as more expressive than his 2005s have thus far been, and in the observation that these 2006s improve as they open to the air, suggesting to me considerable longer-term cellaring potential than one can expect from most wines of the vintage. Wine Advocate.December, 2009