2011 Hautes Cotes de Nuits

The 2011 Haut Cote de Nuits Rouge, which comes from the same plot as the white, has a clean fresh red currant and raspberry bouquet. The palate is medium-bodied with light tannins, attractive tart cherry fruit and pleasing weight on the nonchalant finish. Fine. Drink now. I have long admired the wines of Anne Gros where I have been visiting since the late 1990s, before I ever put pen to paper, so to speak. She has always been a typical Burgundian, preferring to stay in and around Vosne with her husband, Jean-Paul Tollot, and their three children. Years ago, she spoke of her dislike of travelling abroad. But Burgundy has changed and become more international. Anne has changed too, since she was in Hong Kong when I came by, so it was her daughter Julie who guided me through the wines-having just started working with her mother in recent months. Some commentators have criticized Anne’s wines for leaning too far toward new oak, though I myself have found them to handle the wood and absorb it well once the wines are allowed to age. But I have to confess, I did find the use of 100% new oak suppressed and occasionally overwhelmed the fruit in these 2011s. The usual exuberance may have been diminished by bottle shock, but I worry that some of these wines did not show the requisite weight of fruit to handle that amount of oak. It is nothing to do with the winemaking, but rather the limitations imposed by the growing season. Importer: Atherton Wine Imports; www.awiwine.com