2007 Puligny Montrachet Les Combettes

Sauzet’s 2007 Puligny-Montrachet Les Combettes comes largely from 56 year old vines toward Meursault, a small parcel of younger vines that borders Puligny Les Perrieres generally being declassified into his village wine. A pungent nose of lavender, lilac, fresh ginger, lime zest, and crushed stone leads to an active, vibratory, persistently pungent yet silken-textured palate impression that is palpably dense without exhibiting any heaviness. Persian melon and peach lend lusciousness, while saline, iodine, and crustacean elements make for intriguing mineral complexity. The combination of volume, tactile grip, prominent stoniness, and sheer sizzle in the finish here remind me a bit of certain great Gruner Veltliners. If you depart from a glass of this without feeling enervated and invigorated, better check with your doctor! Gerard Boudot harvested the majority of his fruit during the first week in September, after what he considered to have been one last, critical week of ripening, and believing that it was more important to retain ripe acidity than go for a bit more potential alcohol. He reports having chaptalized selectively – largely at village level and to a very small degree – but the wines top out below 13% finished alcohol. Boudot did a rigorous selection not, he claimed, to remove rot but to cull any under-ripe berries and bunches. All of his 2007s were bottled by March, 2009 after their having spent 5-6 months assembled in tank, a period of passive watchfulness that is among diverse aspects of Boudot’s regimen to have been adjusted in recent years in response to high incidence of wines from the late ‘90s that displayed excessive oxidization after a half dozen years. The regimen of new oak here, incidentally, is 20-25% for the premier crus (with the exception of a bit more on Combettes), and never stands out as a factor detectable in itself. (The wines of this domaine legally belong to two entities, that of Domaine Etienne Sauzet and the company consisting of Boudot and his wife. In addition fruit is acquired for a few bottlings on long-term contract. I have not attempted to call attention to these differences in my notes, and in fact numerous crus represented here have multiple official owners.) Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802