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Tasting Notes
Medium red. Virtually mute on first pour, closed and peppery in the mouth and impossible to taste. With 24 hours in the recorked bottle, this showed lovely raspberry and rose petal aromas and flavors; a far more chewy texture; and complex nuances of sappy, salty minerality. Finishes with dusty tannins and very good tactile persistence.
Critic Scores
Average Score
Allen Meadows, Burghound
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
More reviews and scores
The Bouchard 2008 Le Corton offers especially saline and spicy accents to its deep red fruit and raw meat, sirloin juice-like flavors. Cedar, fresh ginger, white pepper, blond tobacco, and vanilla bean all make for a pungent aromatic and palate display, and a rich, almost velvety texture is reconciled with the sort of nearly electric vivacity and finishing resonance of which this vintage is so singularly and memorably capable. “The middle sector of the hillside gives the silkiness and the old vines backbone,” remarks Prost but the young vines and higher elevations, he goes on to explain aid the sense of vivacity. This should prove to be worth following for the better part of two decades. What’s more, it represents amazing value not only for a grand cru but more importantly for a red Burgundy this outstanding. Director-winemaker Philippe Prost made no attempt to minimize the challenges of 2008 and was careful to distinguish between its wind-borne concentration and genuinely ideal phenolic maturity (approached more nearly this year in white than red). He opined that the wide window afforded for relaxed picking despite the late calendar date was critical, since the levels of ripeness were so disparate from one site to another. That said, he showed me an outstanding collection of Pinots. Ironically, as he pointed out, ripeness was also disparate in one of the two earliest vintages on record, 2007, yet picking – while fitful – was anything but relaxed due to the pressure of rot. And here, too, Bouchard scored excellent successes. By means of, where necessary, “swapping lees” between barrels to inoculate stubborn lots, Prost says he was able to get all of his 2008s through malo-lactic conversion in timely fashion, which he considers especially important with Pinot. Bottling of the 2008 reds – with a few exceptions mentioned in my notes and due to have been bottled in April – took place in December and January, the same schedule adopted for their 2007s. I did not have an opportunity to taste nearly all of Bouchard’s vast collection from either vintage, and have in the text of my notes indicated a few from among their 2008s that I take to represent significant omissions. (I have not noted “Domaine” to distinguish those wines that are part of the Bouchard, except in cases where there is another otherwise eponymous wine.)
Relatively generous but not dominant wood intrudes upon the very ripe plum, cassis and floral aromas lead to extremely rich, opulent and palate drenching broad-scaled flavors that possess more dry extract than any wine to this point and possibly in the entire range, all wrapped in a balanced, long and ultra serious finish. Note the suggested drinking window date and I'm not completely convinced that is necessarily long enough.
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About the producer

Bouchard Père & Fils is one of Burgundy’s oldest and most established wine producers. Founded in 1731 by Michel Bouchard, it is the largest vineyard owner in the Côte d’Or with 130 hectares of vines.