1997 Domaine Georges Roumier Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru

The 1997 Corton Charlemagne is a superb wine, harnessing the vintage's super-ripe qualities, while maintaining outstanding freshness, focus, and harmony. Aromatically, it reveals candied white and yellow fruits, grilled toast, and vanilla. This dense, medium to full-bodied, broad, powerful, mouth-filling wine is crammed with tropical fruits, grilled oak, and hints of minerals. Its impressively long and well-delineated finish exhibits luscious spice cake flavors for additional complexity. Projected maturity: now-2009. Importer: Seagram Chateau and Estate Wines Company, New York, NY; tel; (212) 572-7725.

Aromas of grapefruit, hay and oak spice. Thick and silky, with terrific volume in the mouth; sweet and generous despite possessing impressive acid spine. Superripe apricot flavor. Very long, sweet back end. The malolactic fermentation began after the alcoholic fermentation became stuck; the primary fermentation ultimately finished in June of '98.