2008 Montrachet

Superripe aromas of peach, clove, rose petal and spices. Rich, creamy, superripe and full, with a strong spice component and a phenolic aspect verging on tannic. Finishes broad, lush and sweet, with superb length. From very ripe fruit picked at the end of the harvest, on October 5. Just 18% new oak here, according to winemaker Prost.

Very pale yellow. Superripe, multidimensional nose offers stone fruits, grilled bread, acacia flower, spices, iodine, oyster shell and chicken broth. At once thick and bright in the mouth, with great penetration and lightness of flavor. Large-scaled and creamy wine with outstanding breadth. The finish is youthfully imploded, in fact nearly brutal, but at the same time extremely long and rich. (I should note that winemaker Prost lined up these last four wines for me last November, following my tastings of Bouchard's 2008 reds. They were not yet in bottle but were close to being finished wines. And they paired the same way as the finished wines did: the Corton-Charlemagne and "regular" Chevalier-Montrachet were utterly penetrating, taut and mineral-driven, while the Cabotte and Montrachet were sweeter, larger-scaled and a bit less forbidding.) Sep 10, www.vinous.com

At the risk of waxing poetic, the nose is genuinely like a spring day in a garden with utterly beguiling and multifaceted aromas of an implausibly broad variety of flowers, spices, discreet pain grillé, roasted nuts and a hint of garrigue that complements the dense, brooding and very serious flavors that are borderline massive yet, like the Cabotte, betray absolutely no sense of undue weight or blowsyness. The explosive finish stains the palate and coats the mouth with dry extract and this is one of the greatest examples of this wine that I have ever seen from Bouchard but be prepared to be patient. A true 'wow' wine. Jun 10, www.burghound.com, Drink: 2023+