2008 Bourgogne Cuvee de Noble Souche

Grown on an exposed plateau in Daix, northwest of Dijon, Mortet’s 2008 Bourgogne Cuvee De Noble Souche unsurprisingly accentuates the brightness, levity, vivacity, and sense of things mineral that has been a feature of this wine in other years. Aromas of salt spray, horehound, and fresh blackberry usher in a vibrant, tartly berryish, invigoratingly saline palate with startling and refreshing length. What tannins there are here are fine to the point of disappearance, even when the wine’s late malo and long-lingering CO2 would have tended to accentuate them. This really makes me think “black Riesling.” It should be both fascinating and deliciously versatile to follow over the next 3-5 years. (One small lot of Bourgogne had not yet been blended into what I tasted due to its late malo.) Arnaud Mortet was one of several young Burgundy growers to remind me that he had never before witnessed anything remotely like 2008 even in the sense of a vintage about which he was forced to at one point confront the sinking feeling “perhaps the fruit simply won’t ripen.” In the event, he need not have worried, because his knack, low yields (encompassing this year three separate green harvests), and outstanding vineyards teamed-up for a fine collection. Mortet pursued a regimen of very gentle fermentative extraction – as much from stylistic proclivity, though, as from caution –chaptalizing at most a half a degree, and then only on non-cru lots. This was also a vintage with malo-lactic fermentations later than any Mortet had previously witnessed, but I suspect that if his late, great father Denis – or for that matter his grandfather – could testify, they would have said the same. Some lots did not finish until the spring of last year, as a result of which neither Mortet’s Fixin nor his basic village Gevrey were not testable when I last visited. (Nor, unfortunately, did I have opportunity to taste any of Mortet’s 2007s.) Importer: Martine’s Wines, Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400