2005 Domaine Claude Dugat Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaux Saint-Jacques 1er Cru

From relatively young vines (though you’d never guess by the taste), the 2005 Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaux St.-Jacques takes a leap up in quality, offering outstanding depth of sweet, ripe cherry, dried cranberry and peach preserves, impressive meatiness, and bracingly salty, bitter-sweet shrimp shell-like, as well as implacably chalky minerality. A certain not unpleasant tartness of fruit and chewy tannin creep into the finish, which exhibits the sort of youthful stamina and energy one anticipates just staring at the youthfully deep purple pool that is a glass of Claude Dugat Gevrey. Visit this dynamic wine in 6-8 years, although it should then have the makings of another decade’s interesting evolution. Known for his low yields and intensely concentrated Pinots (all but the Bourgogne raised in new barrels), Claude Dugat – with the increasing involvement of his son Bertrand – has rendered a formidable 2005 collection that makes no concessions to early charm. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083.

Bright red-ruby color. Reticent, vinous nose offers black cherry, blackberry and licorice. Juicy and tight on the palate, offering less obvious early sweetness and generosity of texture than the premier cru. In a distinctly cool, taut style and not yet filled in. The wine's chewy tannins suggest it will need a good six or seven years of bottle aging.

This too is notably ripe with an expressive and beautifully elegant nose of dark berry, plum and stone notes that introduce detailed and mineral-infused medium full flavors that are firmly structured though not aggressive as the tannins are quite fine and here there is an admirable sense of overall balance and harmony. Lovely if not a knockout though note that it is extremely ripe if not surmature. Jan, 2008