2012 Gevrey Chambertin Estournelles St Jacques

Good deep, bright red. Vibrant, captivating aromas of blackberry, cassis, violet and crushed stone. Silky-sweet, pure and stylish, with intense, rather cool blue and black fruit flavors complicated by spices and minerals. Most impressive today on the sappy, bright, slowly building finish, which throws off notes of medicinal black cherry, pungent crushed stone and earth. This classically dry, saline wine, from one of the highest sites in the village, needs at least five years of patience and will probably be better with a decade of aging. Boasts near-grand cru intensity.

The 2012 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Estournelles St-Jacques comes from a single 0.42-hectare parcel planted in 1956. Here, the stony/earthiness is more expressive than the Lavaux St.-Jacques and it seems to whisk you straight to the limestone component in the soils. The palate is very well balanced with blackcurrant pastilles and a touch of white pepper on the entry. It builds gently in the mouth but does not go too far, finishing likes so many of Frederic Esmonin’s wines, with grace and style. This is another sublime expression of the vintage. I made a brief visit to Domaine Frederic Esmonin in Gevrey-Chambertin where I met Frederic and father Andre Esmonin, who had kindly organized a tasting in their office, where a heater allowed me to thaw out temporarily until 20 minutes later when I was back down the cellars of Frederic’s cousin Sylvie. Until 1988 the wines were sold in bulk to no less than Leroy and Louis Jadot, but over the last two decades they have quietly gone about their way producing high quality Gevrey-focused wines from their 3.60-hectare of holdings. It’s the same old story: 50% overall reduction due to poor flowering. Here, all bunches are de-stemmed and matured in oak sourced from three cooperages: CaVin, Seguin-Moreau and Radoux. The domaine has a reputation for bottling relatively early and these 2012 had been bottled end-October. My experience of mature bottles suggests that it does not compromise these wines that have an unerring ability to age and what is more, can often be found at reasonable prices. These are beautifully crafted 2012s that are composed, poised and cautiously intense. Importer: Atherton Wine Imports (www.awiwine.com) in California and Howard Ripley (UK)