2005 Clos Vougeot

The Ambroise 2005 Clos Vougeot – around 75 cases worth, from a parcel near Grands Echezeaux – smells of black currant and charred meat. To these elements are added notes of walnut liqueur and brine-like as well as stony expressions of minerality. This has a sense of creaminess and a focus of fruit in the finish when compared with many of the overtly structured, brashly-concentrated wines in this year’s collection, but there is still a certain smoky, pungent severity here. Nor is this any less powerful than other of those wines. I would look to cellar it for at least 8-10 years. Amboise characterized this year’s fruit as consisting of “perfect berries, solid and well-structured” from which he concluded it should all be de-stemmed and a cautious approach taken to extraction. But caution is relative. Bertrand Ambroise certainly vinifies with a fanatic dedication to quality, but also with no concessions to the faint of heart, and his formidably tannic 2005s will strike some tasters as hyper-concentrated and flirting with over-extraction. Perhaps a bit more refinement and differentiation might have been achieved with a less robust and woody approach? Ambroise works largely with 400-liter barrels in an effort to preserve fruit by diminishing the surface-to-volume ratio and thus the flavoring effects of new wood, but I cannot claim that I would have recognized that fact in the wines themselves. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083