2008 Volnay Champans

Medium red. Enticing nose offers black cherry, flowers, red licorice and minerals. Suppler and broader but less refined on entry than the Taillepieds, with distinctly darker fruit flavors. Strong acidity ultimately gives this pure wine a youthfully austere character. Finishes with excellent length and spice character. This tight wine calls for five years of cellaring.

Tart cherry, porcini, and game in the nose of the d’Angerville 2008 Volnay Champans lead to a sappy, bright mouthful of vivid red berries underlain by mushroom stock and following up with a saline, umami-rich, saliva-inducing finish. This has the purity and clarity, the brightness and energy that make this vintage so fascinating and appealing – at least to tasters for which these are important virtues. I suspect it will retain its energy for 10-12 years at least. Guillaume d’Angerville and Renaud de Villette had good reason for their upbeat assessment of 2008 quality given the vintage’s travails, notably July hail that ravaged their Champans and parts of their villages and Bourgogne holdings, as well as touching other sites. The hail came too soon in the season, though, to have ill-effects on the eventual health of the fruit, and the team did not start picking until the 27th of September. With the exception of Clos des Ducs and Taillepieds – bottled the week of my April visit, but showing no ill-effects, au contraire – the 2008s were bottled in early March. Importer: Diageo Chateau and Estate Wines Company, New York, NY; tel. (212) 419-1400

Good medium red. Redcurrant, red cherry and spices on the nose. Dry and classic, with its restrained sweetness of fruit currently dominated by the wine's firm structural underpinning. Really saturates the mouth, but doesn't yet show the complexity of the Taillepieds.