2005 Echezeaux

Here the nose is spicy and ripe but brooding, serious and backward with aromas running toward dark berry fruit, earth, game and smoke that introduce intense, powerful and sleekly muscled full-bodied flavors supported by equally firm tannins and a vibrant, intense and mouth coating finish. This is almost as serious as the Clos de Vougeot and will likely require just as much patience for it to arrive at its majority. This is a first class knockout.

Grivot’s 2005 Echezeaux leads with black raspberry and tart, high-toned red raspberry, fresh ginger, orange zest, black truffle, and wisps of wood smoke. Bright, high-toned, berry essences and pungent spice and smokiness dominate in the mouth as well, with a superb concentration and purity of sweet, creamy fruit coating the palate. Low-toned minerals and meat stock emerge in the wine’s long finish, but its energetic, invigorating brightness and primary sweetness of fruit remain undiminished. Etienne Grivot aimed this year for gentle extraction (essentially without pigeage), then watchful preservation of the freshness, subtleties and refinement inherent in near-perfect raw material. He performed some very light chaptalization to extend the fermentations. Given the health and natural concentration of his vinous raw material, he felt no need to sulfur or rack the wines until shortly prior to bottling (without filtration), which was the stage at which I tasted. Importer: Diageo Chateau and Estate Wines Company, New York, NY; tel. (212) 419-1400.

Good ruby-red. Black raspberry, tobacco and smoke on the nose, plus a whiff of menthol that adds freshness. Silky, superconcentrated and sweet, with velvety fruit coating the entire palate. This is very ripe but the perfectly integrated acids give it lovely balance. Grivot has old vines in the lieu-dit Les Cruots.