2008 Chambolle Musigny Les Baudes

A slightly reduced, gamey note in the nose mingles with intimations of the refreshingly tart red berries that dominate the palate of Hubert and Laurent Lignier’s 2008 Chambolle-Musigny Les Baudes, a wine that now represents a blend of estate and purchased fruit. But I find the flavors here a bit simple and the finish strangely diffident even if refreshing. I would have expected more, and perhaps this is unaccountably in a difficult stage. Certainly I would not try to handicap its bottle evolution. Hubert and Laurent Lignier – for more on whose recent evolution as a domaine and as negociants, consult my report in issue 186 – had one barrel from 2008 still stuck in malo last February, and several others had only finished by Christmas. No wines had been bottled (though they were assembled) when I last tasted them in February; indeed even the 2007s here were not bottled until May and June of 2009. Natural alcohol in the 2008 collection peaked at 13% in the Charmes and Combottes (due to extreme millerandage there, notes Laurent Lignier) and all of the wines were very lightly-chaptalized. Sorting was much less arduous for them in 2008 than 2007, he adds. As is evident from my rating, the array of wines from lesser locations or that incorporate purchased fruit have not (in the years since the splitting-up of control over this estate) nearly approached the consistently outstanding quality that the three or four top Lignier bottlings continue to exhibit. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990