2008 Domaine Ponsot Griotte-Chambertin Grand Cru

The 2008 Griotte-Chambertin is a huge, super ripe wine loaded with dark fruit, earthiness and tobacco. This shows notable intensity but not quite the pedigree or refinement that is the hallmark of Ponsot. Anticipated maturity: 2016-2026. This set of 2009s from Laurent Ponsot was among the finest I tasted. The wines are simply dazzling from top to bottom. Ponsot was among the last to harvest in 2009, essentially starting when most, if not all, of his colleagues already had the fruit in their cellars. The fruit was 100% destemmed and the wines were vinified in oak vats. The wines were then racked into barrel for the malos, where many of them stayed with no further rackings. There is no new oak at Ponsot. The barrels range from 5 to 50 years of age. The range now includes a head spinning eleven Grand Crus, which now total an astonishing 70% of the estate’s total production. Ordinarily I would suggest cellaring the top 2009s for a minimum of 15 years or so, but now that Ponsot is bottling all of his wines with synthetic plastic corks made in Italy it is hard to know exactly how the wines will develop. I tasted all of the 2009s from barrel, where they had been aging since finishing their malolactic fermentations. Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802

Deeply ripe purple plum and dark cherry with the piquancy of their pits mark the Ponsot 2008 Griotte-Chambertin, tinged with resin and pungent green herbs, ginger and blond tobacco. Suffused with saliva-inducing salinity and palpable chalkiness, the expansive, finely-tannic, thickly rich, and persistently sappy palate performance here never looses its sense of vivacity, culminating in a finish of remarkable length and vibrancy. Look for at least the better part of two decades of continued energy from this lean, tautly muscular long-distance runner of a wine. I asked Laurent Ponsot what he though were the critical factors in avoiding the prevalent pink, under-ripe grapes scattered within the clusters of 2008 vintage Pinot Noir, whose undesirable flavors were bound to have concentrated under the influence of late September wind right along with those of the properly ripe berries. “First of all,” he replied, “you had to prune correctly, which is the beginning of everything – like being in front of a piece of wood or stone as a sculptor and beginning to carve a statue. It’s artistic – not simply something that will determine how many grapes (you end up with). After that, you focus on working with and not in opposition to nature’s cycle. Why are we always the last in Burgundy to pick their grapes? It’s because we pick on time.” In the case of 2008, that meant commencing on the eighth of October; and Ponsot’s 2007s – which taste as though they must come from a completely unfamiliar not to mention remarkably great vintage – were not picked until after the middle of September. “I wasn’t sure in early tastings,” says Ponsot about his 2008s, “that all of the elements would fit together into something harmonious.” For the most part, though, they have – at least, based on my tastings from a range of barrels in late winter. With regard to the distinctively delicious and atypical personality I discovered in Ponsot’s 2007s, readers should bear in mind that he employs some of the lowest levels of sulfur in Burgundy, so there’s no pepping-up going on here by means of dosage, which is seldom employed at all! I couldn’t help thinking as I tasted them: was this much excitement really implicit in 2007 generally and somehow the opportunity to capture it was missed at more than 90% of the addresses where I taste? Incidentally, the big news at Domaine Ponsot last year – although, Laurent Ponsot’s choice of synthetic closures for future bottlings and his remorseless pursuit of forgers and security justifiably made headlines – was that there will be Corton, Corton-Bressandes, and Corton-Charlemagne here beginning with vintage 2009. Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802

The malo had just finished in late November 2009 and this was already heady, seductive and surprisingly supple. This certainly isn’t a majestic wine but should deliver pleasure and there is no shortage of plump fruit. (JR)