2006 Gevrey Chambertin Champs Chenys

Good medium red. Lovely class and lift to the pure aromas of black fruits and licorice. Sweet black fruit and cocoa powder flavors are given a penetrating quality by mint and strong licorice elements. Reticent and youthfully tight on the finish, but the tannins are suave and the kirsch and licorice flavors convey an impression of energy.

Bright ruby-red. High-toned aromas of blackberry and violet. Supple but juicy, with excellent cut to the black fruit flavors. I like the combination of clarity, flesh and sweetness here. Finishes with nicely buffered tannins and lingering notes of kirsch and spicy oak.

Tart cherry and red currant mingle with the bitterness of cherry pit and peat-like smoky earthiness in the Roty 2006 Gevrey-Chambertin Champs-Chenys. Firmer than the corresponding generic Gevrey and with a hint of astringency, it brings bitter-sweet herbal pungency and a bite of black pepper to bear on its red fruits and peat in a penetrating finish. This is a bit severe in the context of the vintage and its collection, so I can't help but wonder whether I caught it on a bad day on the sole occasion of our meeting. ||Philippe Roty is among the many growers to assert that under-ripe fruit rather than rot was what really drove his 2006 selection process. "But, hail or no hail, I do a strict triage regardless; and besides" he notes with a laugh, "it hails every year in at least one part of Marsannay." He picked in a relative hurry the last week of September, because "as far as I'm concerned, above 13% potential alcohol you have surmaturite, and that's not good." Besides, like the Mugneret sisters and a considerable number of other top-notch growers, Roty favors routinely – if only slightly – chaptalizing his entire range to promote longer and, he believes, flavor- and texture-enhancing fermentation. (While I have mentioned in the text of my tasting notes those wines that are part of the personal domaine of Philippe Roty and bottled under his name, I have not reflected this in the naming of the wines, as the same label is used for those as for the Domaine Joseph Roty wines and they are all vinified and aged together by the same team.) Importer: Alain Junguenet, Wines of France, Mountainside, NJ; tel. (908) 654-6173 Wine Advocate.December, 2009