1996 Beaune Bressandes

Often my favorite wine from Domaine Albert Morot, the medium-to-dark ruby-colored Beaune Bressandes was produced from old vines as well (3/4 of them are over 45 years old). Beguiling aromas of rich and deep black cherries awash in toasty oak are followed by a seductive, juicy, and hedonistic personality. This velvety wine's flavor profile is awash in thick layers of red cherries, sugar-coated raspberries, and candied currants. Its backbone is firmer and more structured than the Toussaints, which may be a blessing because without it consumers would want to suck down this beauty before it reached its peak. Anticipated maturity: 2000-2006. The score, on a range and in parentheses, indicates that the wine was tasted from barrel.||How appropriate it is to follow one grande dame de Bourgogne's wines with another's! Mademoiselle Chopin, the estate's owner and manager, has fashioned (with her young and able assistant, Joel) a first rate line-up of wines from the hillside vineyards overlooking the town of Beaune.||When I first met Mlle. Chopin my initial (and incorrect) impression of frailty was immediately squashed by her self-assured look, her rapid step, and her high level of energy. Young women in Burgundy owe a great deal to the efforts of this lady who has made superb Beaune's in the cold and damp cellars of her beautiful old home. There was a time when winemaking was considered a man's job (ignorants and a few old timers stuck in their ways still believe that a woman's presence in a cellar will "turn" their wines), yet Mlle. Chopin's track record over the years - in many vintages crafting the finest wines from Beaune's hillsides - has proved that a woman's place can be the cellar.||Due to her severe pruning and green harvesting, Mlle. Chopin's vineyards yielded between 30 and 35 hectoliters/hectare, admirable figures in any vintage, they are superb in this one. She laughed and said, "after tasting the wines I wished I had not dropped as much fruit in green harvesting, I think I could have done just as well and made more." My impression, having tasted hundreds upon hundreds of 1996s, I think I could have done just as well and made more." Wine Advocate.April, 1998