2007 Nuits St Georges Les St Georges

Tasted blind. Smudgy garnet colour. Liquorice scent. Very fresh and ferny with a lightly metallic spine, but overall rather admirable. More structure than the average 2007 red burgundy. Good drive. (JR)

Resin, mint, sage, and licorice overtones to the roasted game and deep, palate-staining fresh blackberry fruit of Liger-Belair’s 2007 Nuits-St.-Georges Les St.-Georges seem to point in part toward its one-third proportion of stems and whole clusters. Here is a 2007 that hasn’t just retained fresh fruit vivacity but displays textural richness and authoritative grip as well. A saline streak extends the finish and calls forth saliva and yearning for the next sip. I would bet on it for at least ten years of high-performance. Thibault Liger-Belair was bullish on his 2008s – and for good reason, pointing out that for him, the challenge of rot was significantly greater in 2007. That said, his collection from the latter vintage is impressive of its kind, too, and I concur with his assessment (a far more conservative one than I heard from many growers) that the best 2007s should be worth following for a decade, but probably not much longer. He felt confident in both 2007 and 2008 to utilize stems and whole clusters extensively in fermentation, as is his wont whenever he deems it possible. Most of the Thibault Liger-Belair 2008s had been bottled a month before I tasted them – a late start on bottling by the standards he has thus far set. Liger-Belair says he has now settled into a biodynamic regimen for all of his vineyards, after having first tried out certain methods on property he acquired in the Hautes-Cotes in 2004. He opines that among other things these methods have rendered the vine wood more supple, which permits elevating and expanding the canopy without shading the fruit or risking wind-snapped branches, and he believes this expansion was critical to the measure of ripeness he was able to achieve in the prolonged, breezy late innings of 2008. Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802

Deep and rich and very exotic and puts the simplicity of most 2007s into perspective, Long and dry on the finish. Very exciting. Thibault himself was disappointed with how this and the Clos Vougeot showed (too much oak) but then he knows how they should look. Great finish with flora and fauna all over the place. (JR)