2011 Domaine A.F. Gros Richebourg Grand Cru

A spicy, wonderfully fresh and cool nose is comprised of notes of plum, violets, anise, cinnamon, sandalwood and red pinot fruit liqueur scents. There is an opulent mouth feel to the velvety yet distinctly powerful broad-shouldered flavors that possess excellent volume before culminating in a balanced, impressively long and mouth coating finish. As classic examples of Richebourg go, this should drink well somewhat earlier yet will still require the better part of a decade to be enjoyable. Tasted: Apr 15, 2013. Drink: 2021+

The 2011 Richebourg Grand Cru has fine transparency on the nose, more “stony” than fruit-driven, well-defined with scents of terracotta and wet clay emerging with time. The palate is medium-bodied with a gentle grip on the entry. The tannins are quite fine once again, nicely balanced with an unprepossessing finish that leaves a dash of white pepper in the mouth. Fine, but perhaps not a long-term Richebourg. Drink 2014-2020. ||I have long admired the wines of Anne Gros where I have been visiting since the late 1990s, before I ever put pen to paper, so to speak. She has always been a typical Burgundian, preferring to stay in and around Vosne with her husband, Jean-Paul Tollot, and their three children. Years ago, she spoke of her dislike of travelling abroad. But Burgundy has changed and become more international. Anne has changed too, since she was in Hong Kong when I came by, so it was her daughter Julie who guided me through the wines-having just started working with her mother in recent months. Some commentators have criticized Anne’s wines for leaning too far toward new oak, though I myself have found them to handle the wood and absorb it well once the wines are allowed to age. But I have to confess, I did find the use of 100% new oak suppressed and occasionally overwhelmed the fruit in these 2011s. The usual exuberance may have been diminished by bottle shock, but I worry that some of these wines did not show the requisite weight of fruit to handle that amount of oak. It is nothing to do with the winemaking, but rather the limitations imposed by the growing season. eRobertParker.com.August, 2013