2012 Domaine Claude Dugat Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaux Saint-Jacques 1er Cru

Bright, dark red. Musky aromas of black raspberry, game, minerals and coffee. Dense and juicy in the mouth, with a distinctly chewy, sappy character leavening the wine's thickness of texture. Spreads out nicely and vibrates on the back end. This lightly saline wine is consistent from start to finish but its serious structure calls for five years of aging.

The 2012 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Lavaux St.-Jacques comes from Claude’s single 0.30-hectare parcel of vines planted in 1980 located just south of Estournelles. Raised entirely in new wood, it has a well-defined bouquet that carries the oak well. The palate has a candied, sorbet-fresh opening with an intermingling of red and black fruit, the mineralite surfacing with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with quite strict tannins. There is a fine linearity here that lends it focus. Perhaps I would prefer a little less new oak on the finish, but it manages to maintain fine tension throughout. Six months after tasting his 2011s, I return to Claude Dugat to taste through his 2012s that he mentioned would soon be bottled. There was no point in retreading over the travails of the growing season. Claude said that he commenced the harvest on 17 or 18 September (he could not remember exactly which) and chaptalized the wines up to about half a degree. This was a splendid array of wines. Occasionally I feel that there could be a preponderance of new oak that can submerge the terroir, but in 2012 I discerned the oak to be beautifully assimilated and indeed, this was one of the finest set of wines I have tasted at the domaine since I first visited to sample Claude’s 2005s. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, New York City; tel. (212) 239-1275.