2016 Echezeaux

(100% vendange entier ; the estate has just a single once-used barrel of this juice--the equivalent of six hectoliters per hectare--due to the frost but harvested at 13.3% potential alcohol): Bright, dark red-ruby. Black fruits, licorice and a pronounced clove note (from the stems?) on the nose. Surprisingly thick and sweet but enlivened by strong acidity and saline minerality. A rather clenched, even disjointed, style for this cuvée , and less interesting than the 2016, showing the wine's typical spicy aspect but not its classic ripe red berry fruit. This will need long aging to open but will it ever be generous? No shortage of energy or purity but hard to warm to. And atypical for this wine, which is normally destemmed. Here's a frost wine that tastes like a frost wine.