2006 Gevrey-Chambertin Village

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.