2007 Puligny Montrachet Les Folatieres

Spiced apple, pear, menthol and a whiff of white chocolate on the rather closed nose; missing the floral high notes I usually find in young wines from this premier cru. Then supple and subtle in the mouth, with a light floral element complemented by dusty minerals and a suggestion of humid fern. Offers a nice light touch, but I'd still want to drink this on the young side.

The premier cru vineyards of Puligny-Montrachet stretch across the upper half of Puligny's slope from Meursault to Chassagne. The Folatières climat lies near the summit of this slope, above Clos de la Garenne roughly midway between Meursault and Montrachet. With 17.6 hectares covering the three parcels of En La Richarde, Peux Bois and Au Chaniot in addition to the principal parcel of Les Folatières, it is the largest of Puligny's premiers crus. Folatières is also the most recent. Sweetly spiced citrus on nose and palate. Lots of flavour and zest, slightly grainy. Less impressive than some though finishes fresh and perky. (JH)

Normandy cider and high-toned maraschino and pistachio extract characterize the nose of Jadot’s 2007 Puligny-Montrachet Les Folatieres, which proceeds to display a sweet side of nuttiness and northerly orchard fruits on a subtly silken yet refreshing palate. Notes of citrus and chalk follow through a clear and refreshing finish. This refined rendition of its site is apt to improve with a couple of years’ bottle age and be worth following for at least 4-5 years. ||Jadot is one of those addresses where I confess to having feared that the combination of this vintage’s marked impression of acidity and relative leanness with Jacques Lardiere’s love of precision and merely selective use of malo-lactic fermentation might result in a dearth of sensual appeal. And he is the first to admit that a relatively high proportion of malic acidity was present in 2007, along with a danger of vegetal notes. But Lardiere took most of his 2007s all the way through malo, and my fears were at worst marginally realized. An overarching caveat is that these wines received higher dosages of sulphur (25 versus 15 grams) at bottling than those of other recent vintages, and will – Lardiere opines – take longer to shake off a certain pungency or hardening, but it did not find that alarming. As usual, I could not take time to taste all of Jadot’s many bottlings, which are less numerous this year, in any case, than in 2006. Incidentally, the first vintages of Domaine Ferret Pouilly-Fuisse under Jadot’s ownership and Lardiere’s direction – on which I shall report at a later time – are tremendously successful, preserving and even elevating critical elements of the personality that has long wines from that estate so memorable. eRobertParker.com.December, 2009