2012 Savigny Les Beaune Les Narbantons

A singing wine this time with a warbling tenor somehow – real vibrato. Racy and fine with great savoury finish. All pleasure! Tannins again at the very end. (JR)

The 2012 Savigny-les-Beaune1er Cru Les Narbantons has a broody but powerful, saturnine bouquet with brambly black fruit, damp moss and undergrowth aromas that are entrancing. The palate is very pure with filigree tannins on the entry. The acidity is interwoven right the way through this Savigny; lending energy and tension towards the finish that remains linear and perhaps aloof. This is a superb Savigny for long-term ageing. Lalou Bize-Leroy’s domaine wines are not the easiest to procure, but given that in 2012 the average rendement was a paltry 9hl/ha then I am envisaging a few lively “discussions” on the touchy subject of allocations. Lalou, suffering the sniffles when I visited but as energetic as always, was ecstatic about her 2012s, regaling them for their mineralite and terroir expression. She started picking on 17 September, a little earlier than others, and told me that the malo-lactics were a little tardier than usual because of the fresh acidity levels. Certainly some of the samples demonstrated a lot of reduction, more than Lalou was care to admit, but peering through them, there really were some quite astonishing wines in her midst. I speculate that the better Lalou’s wines, the more excited her two dogs behave during the tasting, and our two hour degustation was interspersed by manic tail wagging, the occasion tussle and one growling stand-off at the precise moment I had her magisterial Musigny in my glass. The journey through the grand crus was exhilarating, each suffused with untrammeled energy and tension, more expressive of their terroirs than the 2011s that I tasted back in July. There is a part of me that wants to by cynical given the stratospheric prices demanded, as if to say to Lalou: “Prove it.” And that’s the thing – they go ahead and prove that these are some of the finest Pinot Noirs produced on Earth. Readers should not that Lalou invited me to taste her 2012s either from barrel or later in bottle, whichever I prefer but not both due to miniscule quantities that are often just a single barrel, a position I completely respect and support. I would have chose the latter if I was being selfish, but the former to offer some guidance and some juxtaposition with other vignerons. Also, I did not taste the wines from Domaine d’Auvenay simply because the quantities are so depleted in 2012. Importer: Martine’s Wines. Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-040 and through Justerini & Brooks (UK)

A more structured, tannic expression of Pinot emerges from the 2012 Savigny-lès-Beaune Les Narbantons, where the flavors are dark, intense and brooding. Graphite, tar, violets and black stone fruits abound. The 2012 finishes with sizzling minerality, tension and overall structure. This is yet another superb showing from Domaine Leroy.