2003 Tarlant L'Matinale

The 2003 Brut Nature La Matinale is gorgeous. Apricot pit, peach, smoke, honey, wild flowers and mint are all super-expressive. The 2003 is rich, voluptuous and powerful, with magnificent purity and compelling overall balance. This is one of several 2003s where Tarlant simply nailed it. La Matinale, named after the morning harvest that takes place only between 6-11am, is 45% Pinot Noir, 28% Chardonnay and 27% Pinot Meunier. Disgorged January 2014.

It had been nearly a year since I last had the pleasure to taste the 2003 La Matinale from Benoit Tarlant. As I mentioned last year, the wine is composed of a blend of forty-five percent pinot noir, twenty-seven percent pinot meunier and twenty-eight percent chardonnay, with no malo in this vintage. The wine is now wide open and really drinking with generosity, offering up a classy bouquet of apple, wheat toast, peach, a superb, minerally base of soil tones, gentle smokiness and a topnote of almond. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, focused and classy, with a fine core, impressive balance and complexity, elegant mousse, sound framing acids and a long, refined and à point finish. Based on this most recent bottle, I would guess that this wine will evolve a bit quicker than I initially thought, but for drinking over the next decade or so, there is a lot of pleasure to be had here! nov 2016, www.viewfromthecellar.com, Drink: 2016-2025.