2005 Côte de Nuits-Villages

Sylvie Esmonin seemed to be more excited about vintage 2007 than 2006 when I visited her in November, just after she had returned from a business trip to Japan. She compared the newer vintage to 2002, which was about as strong a comment as I heard about these wines while I was in Burgundy this fall, although, to be fair, many producers were already praising their newest crop of pinots for their purity and typicity. Esmonin harvested on the late side in 2006, during the last week of September, and she told me she eliminated a lot of rotten and underripe grapes in the vines. She describes the 2006s as aromatic and tender, and compares them to her 2000s, "but with more tannins and more ripeness." The Clos Saint-Jacques is 13% alcohol without chaptalization; of the wines noted below, only the Gevrey villages was chaptalized. But these are clearly not big wines by Esmonin's standards. "My minimum for a real vin de garde is 13% natural alcohol," she stated. "The 2005s are more like 14%." She told me she had barely opened her 2005s since they were bottled and was afraid that they wines would be brutally closed. "They're too powerful for the dinner table," she told me.

Sylvie Esmonin mentioned 1990 but concluded that she couldn't really compare 2005 to any other vintage. "Two thousand five is riper than 1990, and the wines have great balance," she said. "They're more ample than the 2002s and will age longer." Esmonin has been vinifying with a growing percentage of whole clusters since 2000 and believes that this element gives her wines more richness and diversity of aromas. To make it possible to keep the stems, she harvests late, when the tannins are riper. In 2005, she picked a full week after the official start to the harvest, and even her bourgogne has a generous 13.3% alcohol. "The stems give energy," she told me, "so we can afford to pick later with higher sugars." (Louis/Dressner Selections, New York, NY) Also recommended: Cote de Nuits-Villages (85+?), Gevrey-Chambertin (86+?).