2005 Chambolle Musigny Les Combottes

This year Barthod has given vines she planted twenty years ago a coming-out, by separately vinifying a 2005 Chambolle-Musigny Aux Combottes. This offers sweetly ripe, cinnamon tinged black cherry aromas and rich fruit flavors mingled with milk chocolate and meat broth, a creamy texture, and a low-toned but sweetly persistent finish. Less vivacious and more rounded than the village assemblage, this has a personality that suggests earlier drinking. Sharing expanded wine-making facilities with her husband, Louis Boillot, Gislaine Barthod continues to render some of the purest, most expressively fruity and consistently excellent as well as ageworthy Pinots in Burgundy. All but the Bourgogne and village Chambolle – recently assembled in tank – were tasted from barrel. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990.