2014 Corton Pougets

(13.3% alcohol; 3.5 pH; 4.16 g/l acidity; yield between 35 and 40 hectoliters per hectare; bottle pulled from my cellar): Palish bright red. Youthfully salty and initially bound up on the nose, conveying a slightly high-toned character, but aeration brought pure, high-pitched aromas of redcurrant, raspberry, blood orange, pepper, mint and menthol plus a vibrant element of crushed stone. Juicy, leanish and quite youthfully tight, but with captivating inner-mouth perfume and precision. Not a fleshy or sweet style but transparent to soil and subtly long. Today the tannns are quite dusty owing to the wine's dryness and the fact that it's currently in a rather imploded phase. (The wine has shut down since I tasted it two years ago.) Conveys a very strong impression of chalky, saline minerality, displaying the sappiness of a white wine, but how much will this ultimately blossom in bottle?

Tasted blind at the Burgfest 2014 tasting, Louis Jadot's 2014 Corton-Pougets Grand Cru (Domaine des Héritiers) has an attractive bouquet with lifted raspberry preserves and wild strawberry scents, a touch of rose petal emerging with time. The palate is medium-bodied with tart red cherries and strawberry, quite saline in the mouth; however, it cuts away very quickly on the finish. It is the kind of Corton you want to give a kick up the backside because it just needs to aim higher. Tasted September 2017.