2008 Nuits St Georges Les Poisets

The old vines Arnoux 2008 Nuits-St.-Georges Les Poisets, displays a bitter-sweet concentration with prominent fruit pit and fruit skin character reminiscent of many of its siblings, but incorporates an especially welcome saline, bouillon-like, saliva-inducing savor. Suggestions of game, crushed stone, and resin add complexity, and the fine grain of tannin is fearlessly exposed in this Pinot’s gripping finish. I would recommend setting it aside for at least 3-4 years and anticipate its drinking impressively for an equal number thereafter, but this is still going to be a wine for those who enjoy some risk. I tasted Pascal Lachaux’s 2008s soon after their late-January bottling, and a few of them may have been suffering from trauma they thereby sustained, but on the whole this was an impressive if darkly-hued and unapologetically firmly-structured collection. Lachaux reports that his malos were “on time, normal,” and adds “the truth about 2008 and why the malos were so often retarded is that people sulfured the fruit too heavily at the advice of their enologues.” Even at bottling, Lachaux reports that he was sparing with sulfur and expected to take advantage of the high levels of residual CO2 in his 2008s. He says he allowed temperatures to rise during the fermentation as a means of extracting more flavor without having to actively work the cap and in consequence risk pulling out green flavors or hard tannins. This approach may explain the particularly low-toned personality of this 2008 collection, which certainly didn’t leave me wishing that the wines had sustained additional pigeage! If the number of magnums I saw is any indication, Lachaux seriously intends on putting to the test his confidence in this vintage’s aging potential. Yet he is also very keen on his 2007s, those of which I tasted from bottle were indeed impressive, though I seem even in this instance to be missing what those growers most enamored of their 2007s profess to perceive. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990