2006 Puligny Montrachet Les Referts
Market price
Buying options
Tasting notes
From nearly 50 year old vines picked the first day of harvest, Ente’s 2006 Puligny-Montrachet Referts offers a remarkably refreshing and vibrant expression of Puligny, yet at the same time a creaminess of texture not possessed by any of the other wines in this collection. Bitter-sweet and piquant notes of iris, toasted nuts, buckwheat, lime zest, pit fruits with their pits make for a relatively austere set of flavors, but ones that finish with formidable persistence and intriguing interaction. There is a faint hint of heat, tending to confirm Ente’s conviction that Puligny is inherently more sensitive to over-ripeness. Ente began picking September 13, finishing in six days. The result is wines of consistent clarity and refreshment, as well as full of nuances that call forth a mineral vocabulary. Use of demi-muids rather than barriques to raise many of the wines here helps ward off any overt woodiness. Eighty percent of Ente’s wine is exported, most of that to the U.S. and U.K. Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel (510) 524-1524
Critic scores
Average Score
Jancis Robinson MW
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
More reviews and scores
Very pale color. Precise aromas of lime and mint lifted by a floral topnote. Dense, smooth and stylish, with a fine-grained texture that's totally different from the Meursault bottlings. At once silky and high-pitched. The Seve du Clos is more sappy and tactile but this is more refined. Finishes very long and aromatic, with terrific subtlety of flavor. Ente clearly loves Puligny wines, so it's hardly surprising that he makes Meursault in a Puligny style.
Cask sample. Very pale. Tight and smoky nose. Introverted, sleek and quite concentrated. Long. A creamy version of Puligny. Served after the Seve du Clos and without quite the intensity. Still quite chewy on the finish. Very neat. Pretty good persistence. (JR)
(picked on the afternoon of September 13, just after the Bourgogne Blanc) Pale green-tinged yellow. Knockout perfumed nose melds musky lemon, lime, white peach and apple blossom. Very rich and silky but also uncommonly sappy, conveying an impression of energy rare for the year. Flavors of peach, flowers, minerals and spices saturate the palate and reverberate on the very long, brisk finish. "It's rare for me to have a Puligny that's so fresh," notes Ente, who nearly always brings in this fruit early.