2006 Clos Vougeot

I last tasted Thibault Liger-Belair's 2006 Clos Vougeot assembled from tank on the eve of its bottling. (He keeps his barrels of grand cru in the coldest part of a notoriously chilly cellar, so as to prolong elevage and guard freshness.) Like his Les St.-Georges of this vintage it is palate-staining and loaded with tart black fruits (cassis, blackberry), raw meatiness, smoky black tea, and mineral matter. On the one hand there is a sense of darkness to the profundity of flavors here and the black fruit intensity, but on the other hand there is brightness thanks to invigorating, tart freshness, with neither excess fat nor any superficial sense of sweetness in evidence. This formidable – if for now not loveable – Clos Vougeot has the energy to and mass to burn, and I can imagine it needed 2-3 years in bottle to shed its severity, and lasting a decade or more. Thibault Liger-Belair commenced picking on September 23 with his Les St.-Georges, as it was already pushing 14% alcohol. That said, he thinks biodynamic vineyard practices have already in his second year of employing them begun to help him close the gap between sugar accretion and ripeness of flavor that has in recent years become a feature of so many harvests in Burgundy (and, of course, not only there). "Every cluster had to be examined and sorted this year," Liger-Belair asserts (with the mere 28 hectoliter per hectare average to back him up), "and you had to be very gentle in fermentation. But I think the results are light without being meager." "Light"? I'm not sure he and I have the same sense of what's "leger," then! "I tried to bottle the wines on the cusp of reduction," he explains, "again, to guard the freshness and fruit and promote longevity." Tasting from bottles that had been open the better part of a day, I was impressed with the wines' stamina, but of course that does not necessarily translate into long bottle aging. (The wines from purchased fruit in this line up – labeled "Thibault Liger-Belair Successeurs” – are identified in the text of the notes, but not as part of the wines' descriptions, since the names used are virtually identical and there is no overlap in appellations. Incidentally, I did not taste this year's Chambolle Les Gruenchers, nor one or two wines of lesser appellation which Liger-Belair did not think were showing acceptably on the occasion of my last visit.) Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802