2005 Louis Jadot Musigny Grand Cru

Both this year’s Bonnes Mares and the Jadot 2005 Musigny were fermented entirely with whole clusters. The latter exhibits a remarkable nose of black raspberry, kirsch, vanilla, incense, jasmin, as well as diverse mysterious forest floor and scintillating floral eminences. Incredibly rich and mouth-coating, it delivers a fabulously long finish of distilled fruit intensity and velvety richness, yet with face-slapping freshness and palpable chalkiness. Brown spices, flowers, and mineral nuances ride a crest of pure, sweet, positively viscous fruit, completely burying the wine’s tannins. Don’t get your hopes up: only around 50 cases of this will be bottled. Jacques Lardiere has once again presided over a collection for the most part not intended to flatter in its youth, but rather to achieve an eventual balance of fruit acidity with (in this instance frequently quite prominent) tannin. Prolonged post-fermentative extraction promoted a formidably-structured group of wines, which Lardiere expressed no hurry about bottling. Certain of these – particularly from the Cote de Beaune – displayed a slightly drying finishing astringency or simply an austere lack of charm to match their concentration, traits Lardiere suggested might be traceable to drought stress in those sites. A brief July rain that reached the Cote de Nuits but not the Cote de Beaune was critical, he asserts, and all of Jadot’s vines in the northern Cote were picked before the harvest in the south commenced. (Wines from the Domaine Louis Jadot, Domaine Heritiers Louis Jadot, or Domaine Gagey, have been identified with a letter “D” in their listings.) Also recommended: 2005 Cote de Nuits-Villages Le Vaucrain ($25.00;86+?), 2005 Santenay Clos de Malte ($27.00; 85-87), 2005 Savigny-les-Beaune Aux Guettes (84-86+?), 2005 Nuits-St.-Georges ($37.00; 85-87+?), 2005 Chambolle-Musigny ($50.00; 85-87+?). Importer: Kobrand, Inc., New York, NY; tel.(212) 490 9300