2008 Domaine Dujac Vosne-Romanée Les Beaux Monts 1er Cru

Good full red. Lively aromas of black raspberry, minerals, violet and mint. Juicy, very intense and dry, with a penetrating floral aspect. Quite youthfully imploded today, with fairly tough tannins calling for extended bottle aging. For all its floral lift, this is overshadowed by the Malconsorts today.

Still in barrel when I last tasted it, the Dujac 2008 Vosne-Romanee Beaux Monts mingles black pepper, clove, and star anise with ripe cassis in a forceful if somewhat reductive display, full of primary fruit juiciness and lip-smacking as well as pungently invigorating in finish. There is a density as well as a tight grain to the tannin here that promises serious aging potential – a wine one might want to plan on enjoying at between 7 and 10-12 years of age, though it is not – yet, at least – refined or elegant. The Dujac 2008s were not racked until last December, and bottling took place January through March. “The malic acid numbers were high-ish, but not significantly higher than in, say, 2006 or 2001,” says Jeremy Seysses in an effort to explain what he admitted were “for us, excessively late malos. I have a feeling it was a lack of nutrients that were wash out,” he continues, since, after all, “it rained a lot in 2008” with, he adds, “poor fruit set proving to be the vintage’s saving grace. I think we would actually have had less to harvest (i.e. worth keeping) if we had had a better fruit set. There was rot, but can you find it in any of the wines? That’s a credit to how far Burgundy has come along in terms of sorting” (which Dujac does exclusively in the vineyard, not on sorting tables – the name of their U.S. importer ironically notwithstanding). “I didn’t love my lack of options in 2007,” says Seysses of the preceding season, “so we picked early – earlier even than in 2003.” In vinification “we decided not to force too much, and just to keep it charming,” which is exactly how I thought the wines turned out. “At Domaine Dujac, we’re never been that attached to deep color, so we’re quite tolerant (in that regard), and the least thing we wanted to do was make hard wines. I de-stemmed more (than usual, or than in 2008). The fruit felt fragile, so in barrel I kept the wines under a bit more free sulfur than usual, which reinforced their lightness.” Seysses opines that 2007 was not a year in which old selections displayed their overall superiority to clones, because “if yo(‘re Pinots) were riper earlier, you were ripe while it was raining,” whereas in 2008 you could scarcely get too much ripeness. Importer: The Sorting Table, Napa, CA; tel. (415) 491-4724