2009 Pommard Les Epenots

The 2009 Pommard Les Epenots is a huge, powerful wine imbued with the essence of dark fruit, smoke, tar and licorice. This massively structured tannic wine appears to have a brilliant future ahead of it?once it settles down in bottle. Anticipated maturity: 2019-2029. These wines from proprietor Mounir Saouma are impressive. Saouma sources small lots of wine from the best sites in Burgundy and does all of the post-alcoholic fermentation elevage in his cellar in Beaune. Saouma’s approach calls for long, slow malos, extended contact on the gross lees and no fining or filtration prior to bottling. Saouma bottles an eye-popping 60 different wines, some sourced from more than one grower. Count me as a fervent believer in terroir. As much as I subscribe to the belief that specific plots of land can confer unique qualities to wines, the reality is that a variety of other factors are just as important, including the talent of the winemaker and the ambient qualities of the cellars in which wines are raised. What amazes me most about these wines – aside from the obviously very high quality – is that there is without question a distinctive house style that emerges across the range, despite the fact that they come from different sources and are acquired as wine rather than fruit. Saouma likes to describe his cellar as a library of Burgundy’s finest terroirs. That’s as good a description as any for these uniformly outstanding, compelling wines. Importer: Vintus LLC, Pleasantville, NY; tel. (914) 769-3000, Atherton Imports, Menlo Park, CA; tel. (650) 328-6639

Good bright red-ruby. Cassis, smoke and earth on the nose, with an element of crushed rocks. Concentrated and delineated, with excellent acidity giving grip to the cassis, blackberry and violet flavors. Plenty of viscosity here, nicely balanced by a serious structural underpinning.