2011 Nuits St Georges Aux Bas de Combes

The 2011 Nuits-St-Georges Aux Bas de Combe Vieille Vignes comes from a 0.45-hectare parcel of 65-year-old vines that, to quote Guillaume Tardy, is the “most Vosne-Romanee of Nuits-St-Georges.” It has one of the more intense, perhaps precocious bouquets in 2011 with lifted plush blueberry and dark cherry scents. The palate is very smooth and silky on the entry with well-integrated new oak giving it a glossy sheen without denuding it of terroir expression. It slips down the throat almost too easily?but that is not a bad thing when it comes to wine. Drink now-2019. I have met Guillaume Tardy a few times in London, but this was the first time that I dropped by at his winery on the Route Nationale in Vosne (word of warning for first-time visitors: blink and you will miss the sign.) The roots of the domaine stem from his family’s metiers for Domaine Meo-Camuzet and as Jean-Nicolas Meo regained control, the Tardy family had to effectively rebuild their own domaine. So Jean Tardy began acquiring small vineyard parcels, though never less than a plot that could regularly yield six barrels per vintage in order for them to be worth bottling on their own. Guillaume himself started working with his father in 1997 but his first vintage was 2001, after working at the Picardy Winery in Australia. His 2011s were bottled in February. Guillaume told me that he is looking for silky tannins and freshness and that neatly sums up his wines that I have praised in the past and have no hesitation in doing so again. No known American importer.