2013 Vosne Romanee Beaumonts

Smells very fresh and just a touch stemmy. Small dark-berry fruit aroma. Smooth, gentle and well balanced in a lightish style. Juicy, moreish finish. (JH)

Bright red. Captivating, high-pitched aromas of raspberry, red cherry, blood orange and flowers, plus a note of sweet oak. At once suave and sharply delineated, showing lovely energy and perfume to its berry, maraschino cherry and floral flavors. A strong rocky quality leavens the wine's sweetness. Finishes with serious but fine-grained tannins and a flavor of crushed red cherry. My style of Burgundy!

The 2013 Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru les Beaumonts has an extremely well-defined bouquet: vibrant on the nose and well defined with sous-bois scents infusing the blackberry and wild strawberry fruit, the mineral notes becoming more obvious with time. The palate is full of energy: supple tannin, ebullient and vivacious red cherry and strawberry fruit segueing into a velvety finish. Seductive! ||Word on the street (and I don’t know exactly what street, but one where wine-lovers gossip) is that Domaine Hudelot-Noëllat is “kicking arse” these days. I believe that’s a technical term for fashioning wines with elegance, poise and that abstract term: “pinoté." Charles van Canneyt, “a bit of a dish” according to several friends of the fairer sex, has steered this domaine in a positive direction. Once their wines were “respectable." Now, recent vintages have warranted a small but perfectly formed flotilla of superlatives. Charles told me that he started the harvest on October 5 and used 20% new oak for the village crus and 30% to 50% for the premier crus. Like many winemakers, he blended the stems into the vat, between 20 to 25%. The malolactics here were late…very late. In fact one or two of the cuvées still had not completed their malo by the time of my visit at the end of November (I suspect that is partly because their capacious cellar always feels a little colder than others.) “Personally I prefer 2013 [to 2012] because you can easily tell the terroir. It has good potential for cellaring because there is good quality of tannin and because of the acidity, which is more present in the 2013. That gives more energy in the wines,” he remarked. I have to say, this represented a very consistent and occasionally inspiring set of 2013s that climaxed with a show-stopping Romanée-Saint-Vivant, so luxurious and pure that I suggested to Charles that he serve the sultrier Richebourg before it. It evoked memories of a divine 1980 that I had popped just the week earlier. This domaine’s 2013s come strongly recommended and here I agree with Charles that they may well surpass the 2012s – a remarkable feat given the growing season. Do not overlook gems such as the three Vosne Premier Crus (Malconsorts, les Beaumonts and les Suchots) while their Vosne-Romanée Village ’13 is one of the best that I tasted during my five weeks of tasting. eRobertParker.com.December, 2014