2015 Romanee St Vivant

Full dark red. Musky, wild scents of raspberry, espresso and mocha quickly shut down in the glass. Plump, sweet and quite powerful, with its very ripe, almost liqueur-like dark fruit flavors a bit blurred today by the wine's significant baby fat. Finishes broad, dry and very long but downright inscrutable. Today I don't find the sappy minerality or lift this wine displayed from barrel a year ago but it's stubbornly backward today and will need at least six or seven more years of cellaring.

(100% vendange entier ; 35% new oak): Healthy medium red. Very ripe aromas and flavors of raspberry, espresso and wild herbs lifted by pungent minerality. Compellingly plush, broad and full, with sappy minerality staining the palate and exciting the taste buds on the extremely long, dry finish. The wine's thick fruit blows right past the big, dusty tannins without losing its breadth. This is built for a long, graceful evolution in bottle.

(from a .375 ha parcel situated by La Grande Rue). Here the kaleidoscopically spicy nose is slightly riper with its beautifully layered range of both red and blue pinot fruit, sandalwood, anise, hoisin and rose petal. The rich, classy and ultra-refined medium weight flavors possess a caressing mouth feel before terminating in a marvelously complex, driving and explosively long finish. This is quite firm but not at all austere though I have a sneaking feeling that this is going to shut down significantly once it is in bottle and thereafter, plenty of patience will be requisite. Dec 2016, www.burghound.com