2001 Le Plus de la Fleur de Bouard

The super, limited production, stunningly proportioned 2001 Le Plus de la Fleur de Bouard boasts a saturated purple color in addition to phenomenal concentration. This massively endowed offering is about as powerful and concentrated as a wine from Bordeaux can be. How this wine will age remains to be seen, but this is amazing stuff made from small yields of 20 hectoliters per hectare. It should drink well for at least 12-15 years.

(not yet bottled) Full medium ruby. Highly nuanced nose combines black raspberry, minerals, violet and bitter chocolate, along with a strong spicy character. Dense, sweet, chewy and seamless, with hugely rich, somewhat mentholated flavors of black cherry, dark chocolate and mint. Finishes impressively long, with huge but sweet tannins that coat the teeth. The extraction here was extremely soft-just a single manual pigeage per day in the wine's squat fermentation tanks, and no pumpovers. Still, the IPT here is an incredible 99, according to owner Hubert de Bouard, who told me that the wine spent its first year on the lees, undisturbed, with very low sulfur. During the second year it underwent a normal racking regime. This really transcends its Lalande de Pomerol appellation.

Seems more open and fruitier than La Fleur de Boüard. Bigger palate impact at first, but a very tannic end. (JR)