2008 Le Montrachet

(tasted from a single 350-liter barrel) Cool nose hints at iodine and mint. The brilliantly delineated palate offers superb fruity cut and power supported by strong minerality and complicated by a toasty nuance. Almost painfully intense today; not a thick wine but finishes with outstanding building persistence and lovely ripe acidity. This fruit came in with five grams per liter of malic acidity, but there's nothing hard about it.

The nose is completely dominated by raw malic fermentation aromas and thus just about impossible to judge. The massively proportioned flavors however are incredibly dense and powerful yet there is nothing heavy or blowsy about them. Moreover, the powerful and driving finish is impeccably well balanced, focused and actually elegant. This is not easy to read but my rating is based on the unbelievable potential of the underlying material and there's no reason that this shouldn't be of reference standard quality. Allen Meadows, Burghound , jun. 2010