2011 Vosne-Romanée Village

Louis-Michel Liger-Belair's 2011s are beautiful. For the most part, the 2011s should provide plenty of pleasure in the near and medium term, although I must say La Romanée needs considerable time, even if it is a real stunner today. Liger-Belair draws parallels with 2007, but adds that 2011s have considerably higher acidities. Liger-Belair used fewer whole clusters in 2011 than he typically does, which means 20% for the Chaumes, Suchots, Brulées, and none for the rest of the wines in the range. The Clos was bottled in early September, while the villages, Chaumes, Suchots and Brulées were bottled in January 2014. The rest of the 2011s were bottled in March 2014.

Louis-Michel Liger-Belair had the equipment to cool down the must in 2011 but still had shorter-than-normal cold soaks.But he did more post-fermentation maceration than usual as he found that the wines were gaining in elegance and energy.He began harvesting on September 2, with grape sugars between 12.3% and 12.8%, then chaptalized his wines up to a half-degree.I've frequently noted how classically dry these wines are.In fact, Liger-Belair told me that his 2011s finished their fermentations with no more than 0.2 grams per liter of residual sugar owing to the wild yeasts and to the fact that he doesn't use anti-botrytis sprays and therefore picks his fruit with lots of yeasts on the skins.The first six wines I tasted were already racked to tank. (A Becky Wasserman selection; importers include Wines Unlimited, www.winesunlimited.com and Veritas Imports, www.veritaswine.com)