2002 Volnay Les Caillerets
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Tasting notes
Good red-ruby. Blacker fruits on the nose, along with minerals, smoke, chocolate and game. Silky, fine-grained and complex, with a compelling sweetness of fruit leavened by excellent vinosity. A shapely, delineated wine with a terrific core of fruit. Finishes with a suggestion of crystallized fruit but also terrific energy. This is harmonious from the outset, like the Chevrets. Perhaps not coincidentally, these two wines finished their alcoholic fermentations in barrel in March, which clearly has given them more roundness and nuance. Boillot noted that these wines had 10 or 12 grams of residual sugar when they went into wood. Under normal conditions, this would have been dangerous, but the 2002 juice had the acid structure to forestall high volatile acidity. "We would not have been able to do this with the 2003s; the VA would have been 0.8 by Christmas," noted Boillot.
Critic scores
Average Score
Pierre Rovani
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
More reviews and scores
Standing head and shoulders above Boillot’s other 2002s, the Volnay Caillerets is a majestic, concentrated wine of awesome depth. Its profound aromatic profile reveals notes of blackberries, spices, black cherries, and sweet oak. It is broad, ample, and medium to full-bodied, basting the taster’s palate with velvety layers of candied cherries and jammy blackberries. This plush, fleshy, seamless effort exhibits sublime ripeness in its sweet, melted tannin, visible in its prolonged finish. Wow! Projected maturity: 2006-2018. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083
(14.1% natural alcohol, with a very low pH of 3.07, according to Boillot; aging in 70% new oak) Deep red-ruby. Superripe, very deep aromas of black raspberry, minerals and sweet oak. Amazingly sweet and full but given shape by strong, harmonious acidity and firm underlying minerality. This saturates the entire palate. A wine of extraordinary texture and ripeness, with its sappy red fruit character thoroughly buffering the high alcohol. Has a real delayed fuse of a finish, but the explosion comes soon enough. The melting tannins are proof of the wine's complete ripeness and the perfect health of the fruit. This is the only 2002 that Boillot rates ahead of the corresponding '99.
Standing head and shoulders above Boillot’s other 2002s, the Volnay Caillerets is a majestic, concentrated wine of awesome depth. Its profound aromatic profile reveals notes of blackberries, spices, black cherries, and sweet oak. It is broad, ample, and medium to full-bodied, basting the taster’s palate with velvety layers of candied cherries and jammy blackberries. This plush, fleshy, seamless effort exhibits sublime ripeness in its sweet, melted tannin, visible in its prolonged finish. Wow! Projected maturity: 2006-2018. Jun 2004, www.robertparker.com
About the producer
Based in Meursault and farming some of the finest vineyards in the Côte de Beaune, Henri Boillot is a leading address in Burgundy. He crafts fine Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but the estate is best known for its flagship monopole vineyard, Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Clos de la Mouchère.