2018 Fleurie Joie du Palais

Beautifully vibrant and precise, the 2018 Fleurie Joie de Palais wafts from the glass with a pretty bouquet of raspberries, red plums, peonies and sweet soil tones. Medium to full-bodied, lively and elegant, it's built around fine, powdery tannins and a tangy spine of acidity. Built for the cellar, this will show beautifully after four or five years of bottle aging, and it will continue to improve for a decade or more. This 1.5-hectare parcel of steeply sloping decomposed pink granite was planted in the 1950s.

Not made in 2017 (hailed, so blended in). Hand-destemmed. Pink granite with saprolite.  Deepish crimson. More tangy on the nose than the straight Fleurie. Still ripe but with a wild brightness too. Creamy, deep-pile tannins, thick but soft. Generous and fresh more in fruit profile than acidity though the freshness comes through on the finish. This note replaces the one I wrote in the Lafarge cellar in Volnay because that bottle did not seem totally fresh (it was in a bottle that was half empty and had been sampled over a period of a week using a Coravin). (JH)