2010 Bourgogne Rouge la Croix Blanche

The 2010 Bourgogne Rouge is a lovely, delicate wine laced with sweet red fruit, crushed flowers, tobacco and spices. The feminine, floral side of the vintage comes through nicely in a wine that is ideally suited for drinking over the next few years. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2018. Cecile Tremblay started harvesting on September 21. Like all of her colleagues, Tremblay suffered losses of 30-40% of her crop because of the weather conditions in 2010. Tremblay used 30% stems of the Echezeaux, but destemmed the fruit for all of her other wines as she didn’t feel the stems were fully ripe. As always, the approach to winemaking is pretty stripped down to the bare essentials. The wines age on their lees with no rackings until they are prepared for bottling. Lastly, nearly everything you read about Cecile Tremblay makes mention that she is the grand-niece of Henri Jayer. While that fact is interesting from a historical perspective and explains the source of her holdings, it doesn’t make her wines good or bad. Frankly, these wines don’t need to stand on anyone else’s reputation. They are exceptional in their own right. I also tasted the 2010 Vosne-Romanee Les Rouges du Dessus, a highly promising wine that was still finishing its malolactic fermentation in November 2011 and was therefore hard to read. Importer: Peter Weygandt, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800