2008 Corton Bressandes

The Prieur 2008 Corton Bressandes displays a toasty, smoky, faintly caramel overlay from wood, behind which is very ripe, refreshingly bright cherry. (This site was as usual picked first among Prieur’s Pinots, yet at the highest potential alcohol – which, admittedly, was on this occasion little more than 13%.) Streaks of chalkiness and salinity add interest and invigoration to a finish in which toasted nuts, resin, and smoke also impinge on the fruit. This will be worth following for a decade. Martin Prieur, oenologist Nadine Gublin, and their team hung tight in the 2008 vintage and ended up harvesting very ripe-tasting Pinots, at the price of yields dramatically reduced by the necessary selection (to the extent hail and green harvest had not already cut them back). As a group, these 2008s tended toward a not entirely felicitous alliance of tannic abrasion and toasty, smoky, ultimately slightly palate-drying new wood, although many of the wines showed more harmoniously when I re-tasted them in April than they had the month prior, and I have accordingly favored my later impressions in the notes that follow. It may well be true by some measure – as Gublin opined – that the 2008s here are more consistently ripe than were the 2006s, but for now I find more depth, harmony, and charm in the latter. Their 2007s – which the domaine began picking already on August 30 – are not currently displaying much of the charm they showed very early on, and while the estate’s staff hope is that this will be regained (and certainly the wines have “structure” in the sense of tannin), I continue to be skeptical in general about deferring those pleasures that this vintage offers. In many vineyards, incidentally, 2008 represented the third consecutive vintage in which Prieur had harvested scarcely more than 20 hectoliters per hectare. Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700

(this and the subsequent samples were still in barrel at the time of my tasting) Good deep ruby-red. Quite ripe on the nose, offering notes of cherry, meat and smoky oak. Big, rich and sweet; the most voluminous of these 2008s to this point by a wide margin. Plenty of spicy oak showing. This really spreads out on the back end. The tannins are quite fine-grained, no doubt due largely to this wine's full (13% natural) ripeness. Potentially better than the very good 2007.