2006 Vosne Romanee Aux Reignots

Lachaux's 2006 Vosne Romanee Aux Reignots displays dazzling, high-toned aromatic complexity of flowers, herbs, and black fruits accompanied by smoked meat. In the mouth this veritably vibrates with energy and interactive complexity of salt and chalk with herbal, floral, and carnal strands. Texturally refined yet with palpable underlying firmness, its increasingly stony sense of underlying minerality as it finishes lends a hint of austerity, but that is complimented and offset by bittersweet suggestions of coffee and mocha; a liqueur-like yet not superficially sweet concentration of black and blue fruits; and an uncanny sense of lift and vivacity. Look to savor it from around 2012 and for a dozen or more years thereafter. Pascal Lachaux – who subscribes to the prevalent notion that this vintage reflects elements of 2000 and 2002 – is one of the very few red Burgundy growers (Rouget another) whose 2006s strike me as outclassing their 2005s. It's possible that his having had a prior vintage to become accustomed to the opportunities afforded by his spacious new, gravity flow cellar contributed to his success this year. And it's of course also possible that I have under- or over-rated one of these vintages. Lachaux – who defends 2005 as one of his best-ever collections – concurs in finding each 2006 typical for its site as well as more expressive than his 2005s have thus far been, and in the observation that these 2006s improve as they open to the air, suggesting to me considerable longer-term cellaring potential than one can expect from most wines of the vintage. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990