2008 Corton Le Rognet

Smoky-sweet machine oil, cooked beet root, and dark berries scent Ambroise’s 2008 Corton Le Rognet, then inform an intensely-concentrated, palate staining reduction of flavors, with mace, charred wood, and chalk lending a formidably tactile dimension but also a sense that its author is flirting with hyper-concentration. Huckleberry (as in the corresponding Vaucrains) and juniper add bitter intensity to the relentless, rather austere intensity, and were it not for a late burst of saliva-inducing salinity I think I might have been loathe to take the second sip. This is another wine of its collection to revisit a few years on, and since I last tasted it from barrel perhaps its last weeks there and its bottling might temper some of its severity, although I am skeptical. I suspect that this will remain healthy even if in a rather rude way for 12-15 years. Bertrand Ambroise picked late and captured impressively ripe material in 2008, though the strident side of the vintage is sometimes still in evidence in the resultant wines, and not always comfortably married with the ambitious extraction and high quotient of new wood that characterize his regimen. (For further details concerning Ambroise’s methods, consult my report in issue 171.) I did not, regrettably, have chance to taste any of Ambroise’s 2007s, which he characterizes, predictably, as having been much more open early-on than his 2008s and as for the most part being ideal to drink young. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083