2005 Maison Bertrand Ambroise Nuits-Saint-Georges En Rue de Chaux 1er Cru

The 2005 Nuits-St.-Georges Rue de Chaux smells of concentrated black currant and sweet-and-smoky machine oil, mounts a massive onslaught on the palate of intense, tart black currant, blackberry and huckleberry and finishes with if anything yet more severity than the village vieilles vignes bottling. Charred meat, cigar ash, bitter-sweet herbs, tart black fruit, salt and resin pile on in a powerful finish. Amboise characterized this year’s fruit as consisting of “perfect berries, solid and well-structured” from which he concluded it should all be de-stemmed and a cautious approach taken to extraction. But caution is relative. Bertrand Ambroise certainly vinifies with a fanatic dedication to quality, but also with no concessions to the faint of heart, and his formidably tannic 2005s will strike some tasters as hyper-concentrated and flirting with over-extraction. Perhaps a bit more refinement and differentiation might have been achieved with a less robust and woody approach? Ambroise works largely with 400-liter barrels in an effort to preserve fruit by diminishing the surface-to-volume ratio and thus the flavoring effects of new wood, but I cannot claim that I would have recognized that fact in the wines themselves. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083