1999 Domaine Michel Lafarge Volnay Clos des Chenes 1er Cru

Good dark red with ruby tones. Very sexy, mellow scents and flavors of raspberry, plum, spices and truffley underbrush. Wonderfully broad and full but fresh as well; at once tangy and savory in the mid-palate, spreading out to saturate the entire mouth. Very ripe but not particularly sweet, finishing with broad, dusty, very fine-grained tannins and terrific length. Frédéric Lafarge described 1999 as "an immense vintage" and he wasn't just speaking about yields, which in the case of this wine was a very reasonable 39 hectoliters per hectare.

Now 8 years into its evolution, this is still a brooding and serious wine that now displays the initial hints of secondary fruit aromas though the robust and full-bodied flavors don't appear to have budged in the least as the supporting tannins are still very firm on the wonderfully long and deep finish. This is definitely a big wine and one that will see its 30th birthday without difficulty and my suggested initial drinking window of 2012+ is also probably slightly on the young side. In sum, this is packed with potential but it's clearly not a wine for the impatient.