2015 Richebourg Grand Cru Thibault Liger-Belair 0,75 l

(like the Clos Vougeot and Saint-Georges, this wine was bottled at the beginning of September of '17): Bright, saturated ruby. Deep scents of wild mountain berries and licorice, with a touch of chocolatey reduction. Plush and fine-grained; not now showing the thrust and backbone this grand cru normally displays but then there's still a good bit of baby fat here. Flavors of black raspberry, licorice and smoky minerality come across as classically dry and laid-back. This extremely backward wine impresses today for its palate-coating horizontality. Liger-Belair vinified this grand cru with some whole clusters for the first time in 2015 and it has clearly brought more texture, but the wine appears to be passing through an awkward stage.

In much the same fashion as the Clos de Vougeot this is inexpressive to the point of being almost mute and it requires considerable agitation to coax the intensely floral-suffused aromas of spicy tea and dark berries to appear. There is stunningly good power and intensity to the very, make that very, very, backward broad-shouldered flavors that brim with both buckets of dry extract and an almost pungent minerality on the precise, dusty and massively long finish. I appreciate that I sometimes probably sound like a broken record with my "absolutely must have patience" comments but this is a wine that would be largely pointless to buy without the express intention of cellaring it for at least 12 to 15 years and it should richly reward 20 to 25. In a word, brilliant.