2006 Meursault Les Vireuils

From cool, high-elevation, east-facing vineyards on the communal border with Auxey-Duresses, Roulot’s 2006 Meursault Vireuils gushes with juicy grapefruit and lime. Simultaneously bright and sassy yet soothingly rich in texture and underlain by honey and nut oils, this Riesling-like Meursault finishes with delicious delicacy, subtle salinity, nipping spice, and infectious refreshment. I suspect this will keep well for at least 5-7 years. Actor-vigneron Jean-Marc Roulot bottles 16 different wines (all but three of them white) from his roughly 25 acres of vines. A partisan of clarity, finesse, and mineral expression, he began picking in haste four days before the ban de vendange. Roulot professes a preference for the style of 2004 (“It has an energy I adore,” he says) or 2005. Yet an excellent case can be made – and I think these wines eloquently make it – for the felicitous marriage of 2006 vintage richness and generosity with Roulot’s brand of restraint and his desire to bring out the details and fine points of differentiation between sites. And Roulot is surely the unchallenged master when it comes to unlocking the potential in a wide array of non-premier cru Meursault vineyards (albeit at premier cru prices). The best of these wines – as my notes below testify – are quite unlike others from their vintage. Roulot uses a high percentage of larger barrels, and racks his wines into tank for an extended period, which is the condition in which I last tasted them. Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 524-1524