2005 Echezeaux

Good full, deep red. Musky, reticent aromas of redcurrant, raspberry and meat. Then densely packed and tightly knit, with juicy flavors of redcurrant, leather and game. Today the wine's firm tannins have the upper hand over its fruit. Lay this one down.

I'm pretty certain this is a domaine wine. This wine was being bottled early. Already full, round and succulent but without ingredient X to suggest it had a miraculously long life ahead of it. Rich, noble and quite fine-textured but curiously supple for a Grand Cru at this stage. (JR)

From their single parcel on the Vougeot side of the appellation, the Dujac 2005 Echezeaux leads with aromas of smoked meat, brine and jellied black raspberry. Impressively rich and decidedly sweet and liqueur-like on the palate, it reflects the low yields and relative surmaturite that Alec Seysses says characterized this parcel in 2005. Beneath the superficially impressive folds of fruit, there is smoky, meaty, subtly chalky depth of flavor and ample, fine-grained tannic structure. This impresses with its depth and rounded richness rather than with its interplay of flavors. The already rich array of crus at Domaine Dujac has recently been augmented on two fronts. The purchase (along with de Montille) of the Societe Civile du Clos de Thorey (Thomas-Moillard) has brought them a raft of choice parcels including three new grand cru holdings (for a staggering total of eight). Meanwhile, they have expanded their negociant arm (with control over harvest and green harvest a prerequisite) to supplement in particular their volumes of village-level wine. (Those wines – labeled “Dujac Fils & Pere” – are signified in the above listing with “FP”. In fact, due to a legal technicality, the 2005 vintage wines from the properties newly acquired by the domaine – but not subsequent vintages – will also read “Fils & Pere” rather than “Domaine”.) Even with California-trained oenologist Diana Seysses (nee Snowden) joining her husband Jeremy and in-laws Jacques and Alec, and with a new winery (though at the old address) I wonder at how they are able to keep up with the magnitude of their responsibilities. Yet despite so many parcels and vines new to them this year, the results are consistently outstanding and at times astounding. Much of the vinification – increasingly as one goes up the hierarchy of crus – was of whole clusters. Malos finished (finally) by November and the wines were bottle in December and January. Importer: The Sorting Table, Napa, CA; tel.(415) 491 4724