2008 Savigny Les Beaune Les Serpentieres

From the Guillemots’ oldest vines (85 years), a 2008 Savigny-les-Beaune Les Serpentieres leads with high-toned kirsch, herbal essences, vanilla, and red currant. Lean and bright, with fine-grained tannins and pursuing fresh red fruits, spice, and chalky, salty, peaty, minerality, rather than tracking animal scents in the manner beloved of most Savignys, this penetrates like a light saber and exhilarates the palate, finishing with long, Riesling-like call and response of bright fruit and mineral. It should be worth following for more than a dozen years. A very young Vincent Guillemot – later joined by his father, Pierre – proudly took the lead in showing me his family wines, which I have known for years but until this April had not tasted in situ. These continue to represent excellent values and are good keepers. Guillemots bottled their 2008s in January which is a month later than usual, due to late malos and residual CO2. It would be most interesting to see these get longer elevage, and it appears that might lie in the future. As Vincent points out – and bearing in mind that the wines here have been good for much longer than that – the past decade has in several respects found them returning to methods that prevailed in his grandfather’s time. I did not have a chance to taste Guillemot’s 2007s as I used it instead to gain a foretaste of 2009 which will feature a new appellation, and which is promising indeed. Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 524-1524