2015 Richebourg

The 2015 Richebourg Grand Cru has a glorious, seductive, multifaceted bouquet that offers a heady mélange of red and black fruit, hints of flint and graphite and seamlessly integrated oak. The palate is fresh and vibrant right from the start, featuring filigreed tannin, perfect acidity, beguiling harmony and a spellbinding peacock’s tail of a finish. This is close to the pinnacle of the 2015 Burgundy vintage. Tasted blind at the annual Burgfest tasting.

Tasted blind, Grivot's 2015 Richebourg Grand Cru showed brilliantly, soaring from the glass with a fragrant bouquet of peonies, rose petals, black raspberries, candied peel, exotic Asian spices and blood orange. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, ample and elegant, with satiny tannins, succulent acids and a long, perfumed and beautifully delineated finish. This is a stunning Richebourg that exemplifies the new stylistic paradigm chez Grivot, where the wines seem to gain in finesse with every passing vintage.

(three of the five barrels were new, but one of them was first used to do a three-week Chardonnay fermentation): Dark red with ruby tones. Brilliant nose combines black raspberry, blueberry, violet, pungent crushed stone, graphite, black licorice and sexy oak, along with an exhilarating nectarine note. Utterly silky and seamless, but with buns of steel--and incredible inner-mouth lift for its richness of texture. Really dances on the palate, with the endless rising finish featuring compelling perfume. I found it hard to scrape this brilliant wine off my palate.