2008 Morey St Denis Les Faconnieres

Good full, medium red. Wild aromas of smoke, underbrush and spices. Fat and sweet but a bit less vibrant than the Cheneverys. Ultimately rather closed on the back half, showing notes of spice and game but not quite the verve or nuance of the Cheneverys. This will need several years to integrate its tannins.

”You never have to do anything to improve on the fruit of these old vines,” remarks Virgile Lignier of his 2008 Morey-St.-Denis Les Faconnieres, “they are always in shape.” The resultant wine from this cru that has only two non-Lignier owners is in athletically lean good health as well. Exuberant dark plum and cherry fruit with a tart fruit skin edge and piquantly cyanic notes of fruit pit mingle with village-typical high-toned, bittersweet herbal concentrates on a palate of infectious juiciness and exhilarating lift. Hints of soy, peat, and the aforementioned tart and bitter notes interact with the fruit in a display of energy as well as umami that I suspect won’t run short over the next 12-15 years. ”I love the purity of fruit in the 2008s, which is for me is a big part of the definition of Pinot Noir,” declares Virgile Lignier, after admitting that he shared the doubts of many growers about these wines in their earliest stages, doubts that lead him to de-acidify a few small lots. Natural alcohol levels here in 2008 hovered around 13% although Lignier reports having chaptalized around half a degree for the sake of extending fermentations. He was very cautious in fermentative extraction – “mostly we just took a little juice and poured it back over the cap,” he relates – and in nearly all instances retained around on-third of the stems. Lignier also racked his young 2008s earlier and then two and three times because of what he reported were their stubborn CO2 retention and reductive tendencies, an approach diametrically opposed to that of other growers, but the results here this vintage serve as yet another demonstration that many roads can lead to success. I tasted all but the Bourgogne assembled from tank. “You could do a bit more extraction,” says Lignier of 2007, from which time unfortunately precluded my sampling more than a few examples. (For some details on the sites Lignier farms, consult in particular my notes on his 2006s in issue 186.) Becky Wasserman Selection (various importers), Le Serbet; fax 011-333-80-24-29-70

Good deep red. Deeply pitched aromas of iron, mocha, brown spices, leather and black olive, plus a suggestion of fruit compote. Sweet, ripe and palate-saturating wine that begins a bit soft but shows pungent acidity on the back half. Plenty of volume and density here but leavened by its strong natural acidity. Finishes with a broad dusting of tannins and very good length. With more volume but less precision, this is totally different from the Faconnieres in style.