2008 Charmes Chambertin

The Bellene 2008 Charmes-Chambertin (from the -true- Charmes) smells of creme de cassis; and resin; offers palate-staining berry concentration and imposing sweetness though also enormous underlying tannin; and finishes with formidable grip but for now not much differentiation or refinement of flavor, and certainly not much charm. This had been racked from its original new barrels to older wood the week I tasted it and thus might have been laboring under a handicap. Certainly the raw material for at least a decade of thriving seems present. Operating with a crew of more than a dozen from the same imposing facility as his domaine (for more about which, consult under -Domaine de Bellene-) Nicolas Potel is assembling contracts (favoring organic and moreover biodynamic growers) to support an array of negociant wines in red and (around one-third) white nearly as vast and as studded with illustrious crus as was that associated with Maison Nicolas Potel (which became a subsidiary of Laboure-Roi in 2003, and from which Potel has been estranged since last year). I find the ambitious scope of this project - encompassing the sophisticated remodeling of an ancient Cistercian press house - even more impressive than I do its two initial collections of wines, but then, the exceptional, often very tiny lots of young wine or fruit that informed the best lots from Maison Nicolas Potel and the degree of control that could be exercised over them are not things one would expect anyone to replicate in two years, not to mention years of meteorological challenge as well.. (All Roche de Bellene contracts so far have been for must or young wine, not fruit.) Since most of the 2008 collection had only just been bottled when I tasted it in March, allowances should be made for the possibility that many wines were suffering from this - I could almost have added a "+?" after each entry - which time did not permit me to re-taste. (And for all of the wines I tasted, and report on below, these do not represent the entire 2008 Roche de Bellene collection, as Potel did not assemble samples for me of a number of wines that were still in barrel at the time of my visit, nor, regrettably, could I have found time to taste them all since I had not anticipated such a vast collection.) No U.S. importer has yet been named for these wines.