2007 Echezeaux Les Treux Vieilles Vignes

Tardy’s 2007 Echezeaux Les Treux Vieilles Vignes comes from vines especially susceptible to millerandage, and displays the greatest purity and transparency of bright black fruits in the current collection, allied to a rarified, sirloin juice-like expression of meatiness. Black pepper, cumin, and lemon zest add complexity to the nose and invigorating pungency to the wine’s finish. A slightly chewy sense of tannic density does nothing to obscure a wealth of mineral inflections – humus, chalk, peat – and should be instrumental in permitting this to age interestingly for 15 or more years. I would frankly have taken this blind for a 2008. Young Guillaume Tardy took the reins from his father Jean in 2003, and beginning with the 2008 vintage has had to cede back to Meo-Camuzet the 50% share of fruit they long-retained for farming prime parcels in Nuits Boudots, adjacent Vosne Chaumes, and Clos Vougeot. While de-stemming entirely, Tardy is able to still retain a significant share of un-ruptured berries in the fermentor. Among his other habits intended to emphasize purity of fruit are absence or racking and bottling in December or January (although tardy malos resulted in the 2008s being bottled a bit later). I was especially surprised – as my scores suggest – to have found the 2007 vintage here so evenly-matched in quality with 2008, which Guillaume Tardy said was the more difficult of the two for him. A Becky Wasserman Selection (various importers), Le Serbet; fax 011- 333-80-24-29-70