2012 Chambertin Clos de Beze

The 2012 Chambertin Clos de Béze is going to need time to fully come together. The combination of huge fruit and prominent acidity is utterly captivating, even if the 2012 is only showing a hint of its ultimate potential. A layered, resonant finish laced with new leather, spice, mint, rose petal and violet overtones leaves a lasting impression.

Good bright red. Lovely perfume of crushed blackberry and violet. At once densely packed and light on its feet, with superb definition and lift to its flavors of sweet raspberry, boysenberry, blackberry and spices. Finishes very long and subtly perfumed, with substantial but lush and noble tannins. This is remarkably accessible today but there's plenty of medicinal reserve here to ensure a graceful evolution in bottle.

Tasted blind at the annual "Burgfest" tasting in Beaune. The 2012 Chambertin Clos de Beze Grand Cru from Bruno Clair has just a touch of volatility on the nose, underneath lies some tertiary red berry fruit waiting to surface. Will it or won't it? We'll have to wait and see. The palate is medium-bodied with fine saturated tannin. Tart and edgy as it showed in barrel and yet it seems to have forsaken some of its substance that it then displayed. It is not the most persistent Clos-de-Beze in the making, but the bottom line is that it doles at the pleasure and it improves remarkably in the glass. It's not close to my perhaps over-enthusiastic assessment from barrel...but let's see what bottle age brings. Oct 2015, www.robertparker.com