2005 Nuits St Georges Les Perrieres

The 2005 Nuits-St.-Georges Les Perrieres (from 63- to 68-year-old vines) leads with fresh and distilled black cherry, cola and toasted nut aromas, offers expansive, rich strawberry and cherry fruit on a creamy palate, and reveals impressively stony underlying minerality in its long, sweetly-fruited, cherry pit-, iodine- and spice-inflected finish. This might seem understated at first sip, but it offers wonderful depth and subtlety. One would never guess that three quarters of the barrels are new – a testimony to the wine’s inherent concentration. At the time of my visit, Regis Forey had only recently (with one exception noted below) bottled his 2005s – unfiltered, and with very low levels of sulfur. These are a profoundly-satisfying, and ageworthy group of wines, but not at all showy. Forey was not timid with extraction when it came to this vintage; on the other hand he was one of several growers who told me he had recently lightened up on the use of new wood, and one of several to employ a significant number of 500 liter (double barrique) barrels to diminish the stave surface to wine volume ratio and enhance freshness. Forey’s line-up has been significantly enhanced in recent years by rental agreements. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990

Good deep red. Enticing aromas of black cherry, bitter chocolate, flowers and spices. Juicy and aromatic in the mouth, with sweet, firm, palate-coating fruit lifted by a note of licorice. Finishes with a hint of medicinal austerity and broad, dusty tannins. At once strong and elegantly styled.