2008 Louis Jadot Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru

Jadot’s 2008 Batard-Montrachet is quite a bit different from the 2009 and 2010. Honey, hazelnuts, butter, mint, spices and mature apricots are all woven together in the glass. Quite frankly, I am surprised by how forward and evolved the 2008 is today. This is considerably more advanced than I expect from a grand cru white in 2008. I would not wait too long on the 2008 Batard. Anticipated maturity: 2012+. Once again, I tasted with Jacques Lardiere and Frederic Barnier during a marathon session that lasted several hours. Lardiere has been on a whirlwind tour celebrating his last year at Jadot before his long-announced retirement, but I will believe he is stepping down when I see it. Lifers like Lardiere simply don’t retire. As for the wines, Jadot’s 2010s are unqualified successes across the board. Of course, the wines from the most prestigious appellations are often compelling, but frankly I find just as much joy in discovering the many fabulous Burgundies from unheralded villages that are sprinkled throughout this portfolio. Lardiere and Barnier first thought 2010 was better for reds than whites, but that gap has narrowed recently in their opinion. Yields were down 15-20% for the whites (less than the reds), because of the December, 2009 frost and irregular flowering the following spring. A number of wines were chaptalized approximately 0.5%. The 2010 whites were bottled between February and March 2012. I also tasted a handful of 2009s and 2008s, which I have included here as part of my goal to revisit wines from bottle on a regular basis. I continue to be thrilled by the Jadot 2009 whites, while the 2008s I tasted are mostly equally succesful. Jadot fans know that this venerable winery is composed of several brands; Maison Louis Jadot, Domaine Louis Jadot, Heritiers de Louis Jadot, Domaine Duc de Magenta and Domaine Gagey. In the interest of simplicity, I have listed all of the wines in this section under Domaine/Maison Jadot. There are two cases in which a wine is made by more than one of the labels, in which case the corresponding tasting note indicates which wine was tasted; they are the Chassagne-Montrachet premier cru Garenne and the Puligny-Montrachet premier cru Folatieres. Importer: Kobrand Corp., Purchase, NY; tel. (914) 253-7756

The 2008 Bâtard-Montrachet is a huge wine that saturates the palate with tons of fruit in an exuberant, full-bodied style. Sweet mint, apricots and fragrant honey swirl around on the multi-dimensional, extroverted finish. The wine takes on additional freshness in the glass, suggesting it has many fine years ahead. It will be fascinating to see how this lush white ages.

Straw-yellow color. Expressive aromas of orange, mirabelle and wild herbs. Very expressive, sweet and full (this is 13.7% alcohol), with flavors of very ripe peach, vanilla cream, nuts and honey. Very young and concentrated wine, but a bit youthfully blurry with alcohol on the finish today.