Ponsot's Clos de la Roche Vieilles Vignes may turn out to be a perfect wine. It requires 6-7 years of cellaring and will last for 25-35 years, rare indeed for modern day red Burgundy. It possesses an extract level rarely seen today in Burgundy. It is awesome, compelling, profound, and da da da da da.... Words simply do not do this wine justice. Take the 1990, build on the concentration level, and what you have is the 1993. Perhaps it is not economically viable to make wines from such low yields, but this is what great wine-making is all about. It is a shame so few people will ever have the opportunity to taste it. While I am a great believer that low yielding, highly concentrated Pinot Noir deserves plenty of toasty new oak, there is not one new oak barrel to be found in Ponsot's cellar. The average age of the barrels is between 30-60 years, thus proving that there is at least one exception to the rule that the greatest red Burgundies are kept in new oak casks!

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Tasted with a dinner at the Gramercy Tavern with Steve Tanzer that featured 16 1993 Burgundies. The food was magnificent and the 90% of the wines came from Steve's cellar, bought at the wineries, so the provenance was as good as it gets. The 1993 vintage has a very different profile than the 1990's, with very high acidity. The wines were uniformly young in appearance and generally low in tannins. The wines were generally more medium bodied and most showed better with food than alone. These wines show great precision and structure. Still very tannic and young. Austere and structured, other thought more of it than I did. I would not try this again for 5 years. 90-92