1999 Nuits St Georges Clos des Porrets Blanc
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Tasting notes
The 1999 Nuits Saint-Georges Clos des Porrets Saint-Georges 1er Cru has a ripe and expressive bouquet, one that is "lush" for a Gouges, with copious pomegranate, cranberry and pressed flower scents. There is certainly fine definition here. The palate is medium-bodied with impressive detail, precise but unapologetically forward as many 1999s can be. But you just cannot resist the energy and brio of this wine and it should give another two decades of drinking pleasure. Tasted at the Gouges retrospective at La Cabotte.
Critic scores
Jancis Robinson MW
Neal Martin
More reviews and scores
(from a yield of at least 45 hectoliters per hectare, compared to 40 in 2009, the next most copious crop of the past generation): Good medium red; a bit paler at the rim but not brown or amber. Mellow, complex aromas of dark fruits, licorice, herbs, mint, spicecake and chocolate. Then quite firm on the palate, with its black cherry, plum, licorice and menthol flavors given cut by harmonious acidity. The serious dusty, slightly drying tannins reach the front teeth and build. Clearly a harder, plummier style than today's Gouges wines. This wine may also be lacking a bit of buffering flesh for its tannins, owing to the full yield. It should last a while but is unlikely to loosen up further.
Rich, very ripe, nicely complex aromas of earth and black cherries followed by serious, sappy, tannic flavors that exhibit excellent density and impressive flavor authority and solid grip. There is real depth here and marvelous length and to its credit, this appears to be adding size and weight well beyond what the cask sample originally suggested. Drink 2008-2015.
Monopole. Lively crimson. Slightly autumnal nose. Chunky, thick, dense but correct. Definitely for traditionalists rather than modernists. (JR)