2006 Chapelle Chambertin

Deep, saturated ruby-red. Superripe, slightly high-toned aromas of wild blackberry, black cherry and smoke. This, too, is a sweet, superripe fruit bomb, albeit in a rather powerful style and with a firm edge. Ponsot say it's the wine's tannins that give the impression of volatile acidity. Extremely rich for 2006: it will be interesting to follow this.

The energy and lift here should persist in bottle for at least a decade, I predict, and are especially remarkable when one remembers that Ponsot eschews sulfur. Ponsot's 2006 Chapelle-Chambertin – his last-bottled wine of the vintage, and which I last tasted from its four barrels – offers smoke, leather, ripe plum, and high-toned maraschino in the nose, leading to a richly-fruited as well as richly meaty, yet bright and buoyant palate that proves transparent to mineral and animal nuances as well as prodigiously persistent. The ample tannins here are refined and deftly woven into the wine's fabric. This should be a superb candidate for 12-15 years fascinating evolution, though one that should already deliver enormous pleasure and intrigue as soon as it recovers from bottling. Didn't somebody speak about hail in this vineyard, too?! ||Picking chez Ponsot began predictably late – on September 27 – and lasted until October 5. As might have been expected, Laurent Ponsot acted rigorously in the vineyards in the immediate aftermath of hail and eventually on the sorting table (overseen, he notes, by an especially meticulous team of three young women) to insure that any effects were minimized. (For some notes on the often unorthodox methods Ponsot employs, readers should consult my report in issue 170.) Wine Advocate.December, 2009