2009 Chambertin Clos de Beze

Good saturated deep red. Crushed raspberry, rose petal and blood orange on the high-pitched, scented nose. Brilliantly delineated on entry, then densely packed, thick and seamless, with great purity of fruit. The rising, extremely long finish is perfumed by piquant notes of white pepper and flowers. High class!

The 2009 Chambertin-Clos de Beze explodes onto the palate with full-throttle blackberries, spices and white flowers in a complex, alluring expression of this great vineyard. Highly nuanced mineral notes add depth on the long, intense finish. This is another drop-dead gorgeous wine from Lucien Le Moine. Anticipated maturity: 2019-2034. ||These wines from proprietor Mounir Saouma are impressive. Saouma sources small lots of wine from the best sites in Burgundy and does all of the post-alcoholic fermentation elevage in his cellar in Beaune. Saouma’s approach calls for long, slow malos, extended contact on the gross lees and no fining or filtration prior to bottling. Saouma bottles an eye-popping 60 different wines, some sourced from more than one grower. Count me as a fervent believer in terroir. As much as I subscribe to the belief that specific plots of land can confer unique qualities to wines, the reality is that a variety of other factors are just as important, including the talent of the winemaker and the ambient qualities of the cellars in which wines are raised. What amazes me most about these wines – aside from the obviously very high quality – is that there is without question a distinctive house style that emerges across the range, despite the fact that they come from different sources and are acquired as wine rather than fruit. Saouma likes to describe his cellar as a library of Burgundy’s finest terroirs. That’s as good a description as any for these uniformly outstanding, compelling wines. Wine Advocate.May, 2011