2009 Puligny Montrachet Les Combettes

Bright pale yellow. Spicy, high-pitched aromas of curry powder, nutmeg, ginger and vanillin oak, with good stony lift. Round, broad and suave; stuffed with pineapple and nut oil flavors brightened by flowers and stone on the back end. This should offer plenty of early appeal but should also last well.

Another pure 2009, the Puligny-Montrachet Combettes is rich, round and inviting. Layers of fruit flow effortlessly in this seamless, generous white. Signs of early maturity linger on the finish. I wouldn’t wait too long on the 2009 Combettes, though. Ideally, its fleshy, open personality is best enjoyed over the next few years. Anticipated maturity: 2012+. ||Once again, I tasted with Jacques Lardiere and Frederic Barnier during a marathon session that lasted several hours. Lardiere has been on a whirlwind tour celebrating his last year at Jadot before his long-announced retirement, but I will believe he is stepping down when I see it. Lifers like Lardiere simply don’t retire. As for the wines, Jadot’s 2010s are unqualified successes across the board. Of course, the wines from the most prestigious appellations are often compelling, but frankly I find just as much joy in discovering the many fabulous Burgundies from unheralded villages that are sprinkled throughout this portfolio. Lardiere and Barnier first thought 2010 was better for reds than whites, but that gap has narrowed recently in their opinion. Yields were down 15-20% for the whites (less than the reds), because of the December, 2009 frost and irregular flowering the following spring. A number of wines were chaptalized approximately 0.5%. The 2010 whites were bottled between February and March 2012. I also tasted a handful of 2009s and 2008s, which I have included here as part of my goal to revisit wines from bottle on a regular basis. I continue to be thrilled by the Jadot 2009 whites, while the 2008s I tasted are mostly equally succesful. Jadot fans know that this venerable winery is composed of several brands; Maison Louis Jadot, Domaine Louis Jadot, Heritiers de Louis Jadot, Domaine Duc de Magenta and Domaine Gagey. In the interest of simplicity, I have listed all of the wines in this section under Domaine/Maison Jadot. There are two cases in which a wine is made by more than one of the labels, in which case the corresponding tasting note indicates which wine was tasted; they are the Chassagne-Montrachet premier cru Garenne and the Puligny-Montrachet premier cru Folatieres. eRobertParker.com.August, 2012