2005 Chambertin-Clos de Bèze Grand Cru

"Two thousand six was a year to pick late, even in the Cote de Beaune, in order to capture the beautiful side of a cool summer," said Mounir Saouma, who added that his wines are made from vines picked "earlier than the others in eight out of ten years." He went on: "There was a lot of variation even within the clusters. If you harvested too early, the wines are underripe, with too much acidity. The early pickers have made teeny wines with limited aging potential." Saouma did some lees stirring in 2006, which he feels gave the wines a better balance. "Two thousand five is a vintage to age. The wines have a lot of everything," he added. "But the 2006s may be more enjoyable to drink for many years." He noted that a few of his wines, such as the Vosne-Romanee Malconsorts, are "bigger" in 2006 than in the previous vintages, even if potential alcohol levels were generally about a half-degree lower in '06. Incidentally, for the first time production here reached 100 barrels, with 60 of them red (of which 52 are premier and grand cru).

"Two thousand five was a year to put a lot of lees in the barrel," summarized Mounir Saouma. "The wines needed the polysaccharides from the lees to balance their strong tannins. It was a year not to rack and not to sulfur. It was a year to age the wines with a lot of oxygenating lees so that the wines could open by themselves." Still, Saouma stirred the lees monthly until the end of the malolactic fermentations. Saouma always makes a point to offer at least two different crus from favored villages-in white as well as red-and he told me that he would much rather his customers taste his wines from Vosne-Romanee side by side, for example, than for them to compare his Bonnes-Mares to another producer's Bonnes-Mares in a competitive tasting. After all, his ultimate objective is simple: "To produce typical wines, without defects, that showcase their sites." To that end, he uses only barrels made from tight-grained Jupilles oak (from a forest between the Loire Valley and Normandy), which he considers to be "neutral." Of course, the Lucien Le Moine wines tend to drip early sex appeal owing to their sheer sweetness, so I would not bet against them in blind tastings. These 2005s, though, have been evolving slowly in barrel and appear to be structured for long life in bottle.