2008 Clos St Denis

There is alas just one (new) barrel of Marchand’s 2008 Clos St.-Denis. Soy and plum paste overlain with flavors from new wood make for sappy, resinous intensity, tinged with the piquancy of fruit pit and deep carnal, saline savor. For a combination of breadth and muscularity with finesse and lift, this is already hard to beat from its vintage, and I anticipate at least 12-15 years of intriguing and satisfying bottle evolution. It would have been especially fascinating to compare this wine from 2007, but unfortunately that was among many appellations from the vintage of which not a bottle was to be had by the time I visited with Marchand last February. Quebec-born Burgundy veteran Pascal Marchand (for notes on more of whose handiwork see my report in this issue on the wines of Jean Fery) emerged to prominence as the winemaker at Comte Armand in Pommard (where I met him in his first year, 1985); worked for more than a half dozen years as head oenologist for the Boisset group; and started his own negociant operation in 2006. He works temporarily out of a facility in Nuits-St.-Georges that in his words “is not equipped exactly the way I want,” as a result of which he watches over the early barrel evolution of some of his wines while they still reside in the cellars of their trusted growers, while others are vinified in his facility from purchased fruit, occasionally even picked by a crew he assembles. He is, in short, the prototypical emerging micro-negociant, and if the quality of the 2008s I tasted is indicative of what’s to come, Marchand will soon be even better-known! None of the 2008s I tasted (representing the majority of Marchand’s lots) were due to have been bottled before late May, and most were vinified entirely or majority vendange entier. A Jeanne Marie de Champs Selection (various importers), Domaines et Saveurs, Beaune; fax 011-33-3-80-25-04-81.