2007 Chambertin

Leather, red licorice, cocoa powder, in the nose of Prieur’s 2007 Chambertin presage a stewed-fruit recapitulation of those themes on a broad but strongly tannic palate. The finish offers a rather muddled sort of richness, with prominent caramel and resin of new wood and slightly gum-numbing astringency. But as with other 2007s in this position, I am not convinced that for all of its tannin this really has structure for significant cellaring or the sort of personality that will become more interesting in the process. Certainly though, it should keep well-enough for at least 3-5 years and would be worth re-visiting and re-evaluating. Martin Prieur, oenologist Nadine Gublin, and their team hung tight in the 2008 vintage and ended up harvesting very ripe-tasting Pinots, at the price of yields dramatically reduced by the necessary selection (to the extent hail and green harvest had not already cut them back). As a group, these 2008s tended toward a not entirely felicitous alliance of tannic abrasion and toasty, smoky, ultimately slightly palate-drying new wood, although many of the wines showed more harmoniously when I re-tasted them in April than they had the month prior, and I have accordingly favored my later impressions in the notes that follow. It may well be true by some measure – as Gublin opined – that the 2008s here are more consistently ripe than were the 2006s, but for now I find more depth, harmony, and charm in the latter. Their 2007s – which the domaine began picking already on August 30 – are not currently displaying much of the charm they showed very early on, and while the estate’s staff hope is that this will be regained (and certainly the wines have “structure” in the sense of tannin), I continue to be skeptical in general about deferring those pleasures that this vintage offers. In many vineyards, incidentally, 2008 represented the third consecutive vintage in which Prieur had harvested scarcely more than 20 hectoliters per hectare. Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700