2012 Volnay Santenots

Good medium red. Very ripe, highly nuanced aromas of red cherry, violet and vineyard peach. Densely packed but light on its feet, with the cherry flavor lifted by notes of lime and white flowers. The very long, mounting finish is wonderfully juicy and vibrant.

Lifted and intensely aromatic, the 2012 Volnay Santenots presents a high-toned array of bright red stone fruits, flowers, mint and sweet spices. The 2012 is delicate and understated throughout.

The 2012 Volnay 1er Cru Les Santenots has a ripe raspberry and crushed strawberry nose, hints of walnut filtering through in the background. The palate is ripe on the entry that is underpinned by lithe tannins. There is wonderful acidity to this Les Santenots with a sensual, very pure finish that glides across the mouth, weightless and refined. This might be Mounir-s best Volnay 2012 in the making. ||It is always a pleasure to visit the indefatigable Mounir Saouma at his hideaway winery just off the Beaune periphique. He is a winemaker you can jest with, and he is often victim of my sardonic Essex humor (for example, when enthusing about obtaining one of five barrels of a premier cru, I dryly enquired whether the other four were sold off for distillation - I would not say that to Aubert de Villaine.) And I appreciate Mounir's wines. They used to taste a little too fat and almost over-powering in their youth, but I think he is fine-tuning his reductive winemaking style, achieving more freshness and vitality. I tasted his 2012 reds since the whites were still undergoing malolactic. Among the tidal wave of opinions, one that he emphasized was that to capture the quality of the vintage under cork, the wines should be bottled late, and not in spring when Burgundy will resound to the clinking of glass. Mounir also told me that he paid 50% more from wines in 2012 than in 2011, but that he intends to keep prices within 15% increase. Wine Advocate.February, 2014