2006 Lucien Le Moine Vosne-Romanée Les Suchots 1er Cru

There are three barrels of a 2006 Vosne-Romanee Les Suchots - about as much as is bottled of almost any Le Moine wine - and I last tasted their blend before bottling. This wine's richly ripe cherry and plum; smoked meat aura; and dusting of chalk, cardamom, coriander, and white pepper, remind me a bit of the Amoureuses that went immediately before it in my tasting. It displays a wonderfully deep, concentrated, if elusive, saline, marrowy savor of carnal and mineral matter to accompany its pure, transparent fruit. An invigoratingly bright, exhilaratingly buoyant and persistent Pinot with mega umami, this should reward following for a decade or more. Saouma indicates that this was grown on the south side of the appellation, closer to Romanee St.-Vivant than to Echezeaux, and that would certainly confirm my own sense of the relevant terroir-born characteristics of those sites. "There was too much fruit" on the vines in 2006, opines Mounir Saouma, "and at the same time too much tannin in the fruit." Early pickers therefore, in his opinion, risked getting "lots of primary flavors, but wines that weren't serious. So we started the aging process asking ourselves how we will make this wine less tannic and more serious. After malolactic," which is always late here, "the wines changed completely. But the bigger mistake in 2006 was to bottle early" - something which also never happens at this address - "because the wines needed some time on their lees to extract sweetness and depth, and for all of their elements to come together." The results this year here are spectacular, and need not shy from comparison with their very different 2005 predecessors. Note that with a few significant exceptions there are usually only 1-2 barriques (25-50 cases) of any given Lucien Le Moine wine. Also, despite the number of them I tasted, that did not comprise by any means the entire collection (a circumstance I have taken pains to remedy with 2007). For further details on Le Moine's proprietors and methodology - which, once again this year, included a significant amount of vinification with stems - consult my report in issue 171. Importer: Vintus, Pleasantville, NY; tel. (919) 769-3000