2007 Richebourg

Aromas of espresso roast, plums and raspberries preface Anne Gros's 2007 Richebourg Grand Cru, a medium to full-bodied, ample and fleshy wine that boasts a lively core of fruit, melting tannins and an elegant profile. It's an understated rendition of this frequently lavish and dramatic cuvée that's drinking well today.

Medium red. Complex nose melds sweet red fruits, minerals and cocoa. Silky and aromatic in the mouth, with expressive, highly nuanced flavors of red and darker berries, exotic spices, leather, game and flowers, plus an intriguing saline quality. This boasts early appeal owing to its sheer sweetness but also possesses a fairly solid tannic spine for aging.

A very fresh nose of spicy red pinot fruit merges into light to barely medium weight flavors that possess ample minerality and vibrancy as well as solid length but the usual power, length and deep of material are not here. To be sure, this is classy and pretty but it would be fair to say that the style is not consistent with what one normally finds here. Allen Meadows, Burghound, Jan01,2009