2013 Maison Joseph Drouhin Vosne-Romanée Les Petits-Monts 1er Cru

Good medium red. Sexy gamey reduction to the aromas of raspberry and sweet, smoky oak. Plush and pliant but not especially sweet, showing soil-driven flavors of red berries, underbrush and saline minerality. The tannins are fine-grained but this wine is very hard to taste today owing to its reductive character. I may be underrating this.

The 2013 Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Petits Monts, which Véronique commented is farmed by horse, was cropped (presumably not by the horse) on October 9 and contains partial whole-cluster. Although there was some reduction on the nose, there is clearly sufficient fruit bubbling underneath: blackberry and cassis, touches of iodine surfacing with time. The palate is medium-bodied and very harmonious, silky to the touch, with lacy tannin and not a hair out of place on the finish. This is a sublime expression of one of Vosne's most propitious vineyards, although there are just three barrels produced.