2006 Nuits St Georges

The Forey 2006 Nuits-St.-Georges highlights smoked meat and black raspberry, with impressive richness yet retaining a fresh fruit edge (if less brightness than the corresponding Vosne); nicely integrates toast, caramel, and spice from (500-liter) barrels; and finishes with impressive grip and fine but persistent tanninity. I'd be inclined to wait until 2011 to start drinking it, and then expect several years of satisfaction. Regis Forey insists that only negligible triage was necessary on his 2006 crop, and in addition to the advantages of lees contact conferred by protracted and relatively late malolactic transformation, he also did some active stirring to fatten the young wines. Finished alcohol levels in this collection vary between what appear on the basis of taste to be an ideal 12.5%-13.5%, and with the exception of an uncooperative portion of his village Vosne-Romanee, none of these wines was filtered. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990