2005 Bourgogne Rouge Vieilles Vignes

The 2005 Bourgogne Vieilles Vignes suggests a cooked compote of vanilla-scented black raspberries, impacting the palate with almost freakish intensity for a wine of generic appellation. Despite (though I realize some might say “due to”) all new barrels, this displays finer tannins and more textural richness than the “regular”cuvee. A savory, invigorating saltiness and tartness informs the wine’s concentrated finish. This was bottled the day I visited, but my sample was pre-bottling. Amboise characterized this year’s fruit as consisting of “perfect berries, solid and well-structured” from which he concluded it should all be de-stemmed and a cautious approach taken to extraction. But caution is relative. Bertrand Ambroise certainly vinifies with a fanatic dedication to quality, but also with no concessions to the faint of heart, and his formidably tannic 2005s will strike some tasters as hyper-concentrated and flirting with over-extraction. Perhaps a bit more refinement and differentiation might have been achieved with a less robust and woody approach? Ambroise works largely with 400-liter barrels in an effort to preserve fruit by diminishing the surface-to-volume ratio and thus the flavoring effects of new wood, but I cannot claim that I would have recognized that fact in the wines themselves. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083