2008 Mazoyeres Chambertin

The 2008 Mazoyères-Chambertin Grand Cru did not meet my expectations when I last tasted it. This is a better showing. Clean and precise on the nose, it offers blacker fruit than the 2010 and a heightened marine influence. The palate is medium-bodied with a tad more flesh than previous examples, touches of white pepper and dried herbs enhancing the approachable and surprisingly understated finish. Very fine and drinking now.

The 2008 Mazoyères-Chambertin Grand Cru is a vintage that I had not tasted since I encountered it in bottle back in 2009. It seemed promising back then, however, I must admit that maybe I was too enthusiastic as the bouquet felt a little lean and disjointed compared to more impressive recent vintages, something that Romain Taupenot has addressed. The palate is better with strict, edgy tannin, dark plum and white pepper, hints of sage and clove towards the structured and quite masculine finish that just needs more flesh. Not bad overall, though I much prefer the 2013 that I tasted alongside. Tasted at Flint Wines’ Taupenot-Merme retrospective.

As might correctly be inferred from the existence of a Taupenot family 2008 Mazoyeres-Chambertin – from a large parcel planted in 1959 – their Charmes is all from the true Charmes rather than any of it being from Mazoyeres. Surprisingly at odds with the character of that Charmes, this Mazoyeres displays a very gamey, almost acridly smoky nose – certainly in part a function of reduction, but not one I could shake-off. Medicinal herbs strike a more typical Morey-side note and the sense of meatiness is cleaner on the palate, mingling with herbal concentrate and bitter-edged dark berries and tinged with black pepper, all impressively long-lasting. While anything but winsome, this certainly merits revisiting, and its abundant but fine-grained tannin – not to mention its overall reductive cast – encourage the belief that it will hold up robustly for at least a decade. Romain Taupenot is clearly taking important steps to build on his family’s experience and do justice to their extensive list of appellations in parcels spread out along the Cote d’Or (and in both Pinot and Chardonnay). My tastings of wines from the last three vintages turned up some fine and above all highly distinctive bottlings which, if I were to guess, will probably please some pinotphiles more than my scores might suggest, and please the rest less! Taupenot – who prefers closed fermentors in order, he claims, to prevent influence of the yeasts in one batch on this in another – opined that his raw material in 2008 permitted sparing punch-downs in the early stage of fermentation, whereas he did not trust his 2007 fruit to respond well to as aggressive a regimen of extraction. “You had to be careful not to do too-short maceration in 2008” though, he maintains, “because whereas usually the extraction of tannin in the presence of alcohol is steady, in 2008 the tannin was not extracted until very late.” The 2008s here had been bottled a month before my February visit, all with light filtration, because, Taupenot says, “the levels of turbidity I measured were too high for me to omit filtration, whereas in 2007 I bottled some of the wines without filtration.” This estate is perhaps best known for their few rows of Clos de Lambrays, on account of which that site misses being a monopole of the Domaine des Lambrays; but as I did not have time to taste the entire Taupenot-Merme range, I did not insist on sampling the less-than-barrique-sized quantity of that particular cru. Imported by Scott Paul Wines, Carlton, OR; tel. (503) 852 7300; also and a Scott Levy Selection, Norcross, GA; tel. (770) 730-0361