1996 Puligny Montrachet Champs Gains

Aromatically exhibiting beautiful richness as well as deep minerality, the Puligny-Montrachet Champ Gain is exquisitely dense, lively and complex. This smoky wine appears to have derived its flavors from having been immersed in a bed of minerals and flowers. Its medium-to-full body and silky personality are gorgeously defined by a racy acid streak. I recommend drinking this gem, only Lafon's second vintage with this en fermage vineyard, between 2001 and 2006. The rating, with the range of scores in parentheses, indicates the wine was tasted from cask, not bottle.||Dominique Lafon performed more batonnage than usual on his 1996s, "to give them more richness," he said. However, unlike some other vignerons, Lafon abandons the practice when the malos start because he wants his wines to be protected by the carbon dioxide gas that is a by product of a wine's malo-lactic fermentation. Lafon's yields were between 35 and 45 hectoliters/hectare, demonstrating his dedication to quality in this potentially high-yielding vintage. Wine Advocate.February, 1998

Less citric, more floral nose; notes of smoke and peach. Juicy, bright and intensely flavored; less fat and fleshy than the Meursault but more focused and elegant, more complex.