2006 Gevrey Chambertin Les Corbeaux Vieilles Vignes

Bachelet's 2006 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Corbeaux leads with brown spice-tinged bitter-edged cassis and blackberry, then practically drops off the left end of the keyboard as it opens dark, low-toned vistas of bitter-sweet herbal concentrate, black fruits, toasted nuts, resin, and wet stone. This is sedate in comparison with the Vieilles Vignes bottling, as well as less-evolved and far more structured. It finishes with impressive grip and impeccable cleanliness, if also a certain austerity. I would revisit it in 2010 or 2011 but anticipate 6-8 years of satisfying development. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the last wine to finish malo – right around its first birthday! Denis Bachelet performed a rigorous, late green harvest as a means of "pre-selection," recognizing that thereafter more than enough work would still remain to be done at harvest and on the sorting table. (Green harvest in July or the first half of August in retrospect risked dangerous pressure on berries when the vines began to pump rainwater.) Bachelet guided his 2006s – as is ever his wont – through late malos (keeping them in an extremely frigid cellar), and in other respects, too, he says, the vinificatory regimen was "the same as usual. Nature is what makes the difference." After light chaptalization, they have around 13% finished alcohol. "For me," he says, "this is a very classic vintage, like 2001 but with a bit more acidity, whereas the 2007s are more fruity and feminine." It follows that Bachelet considers his 2006s – especially the (predictably ripest and earliest-harvested) Charmes-Chambertin – demanding of time in cellar. A Becky Wasserman Selection, Le Serbet; fax 011-333-80-24-29-70