2005 Louis Jadot - Chambertin-Clos de Beze

Deep colour and very headily seductive nose. Amazing concentration and layers. Without simply being sweet and rich. Admirable superiority. Great racy dry texture but with truly throat warming fruit. Really exciting stuff. Long, concentrated yet dry and delicate. Great freshness. (JR)

Deep black cherry, charred meatiness, rose and licorice give away the identity of Jadot’s 2005 Chambertin Clos de Beze. Firm tannins and mouth-filling but bitter black cherry fruit, along with black licorice, wet stones, smoky black tea and Latakia tobacco feature on the palate, and there is a savage grip in the the finish. This lacks the refinement and elegance of many of the best 2005s from this great site, but bids fair to make up for this in sheer intensity and mysteriously complex depth. Here is a potentially ageless wine that doesn’t merely typify the dark side of 2005, but is a veritable Darth Vader of the vintage. 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

Full red-ruby. Captivating, vibrant nose combines cherry, faded rose, licorice and earth. Sweet and sappy but almost painfully closed today; as vibrant and elegant as this is, the wine's underlying mineral and floral notes are not yet expressing themselves. Best today on the superb mounting finish, which features noble, fine-grained tannins. The crop level here was 33 hl/ha, according to Lardiere.