2004 Domaine des Baumard Quarts de Chaume

($75) Bright yellow-gold. Expressive aromas of poached pear, candied citrus, honey and white peach. A broad, lush, fruit-driven wine that offers sweet orchard and pit fruit flavors lifted by fresh orange and spice components. Gains weight with air and finishes with very good cling and echoes of honey and peach. This is ready to drink. (Ex Cellars Wine Agencies, Solvang, CA)

Author: Josh Raynolds

Issue: May/June 2010

Ripe and stylish, with fig, pear tartine and green plum flavors gliding along a lovely, creamy palate. Its accessibility belies the vibrant minerality on the finish for now; this should be cellared a bit. 1,415 cases made.

Author: James Molesworth

The Baumard 2004 Quarts de Chaume reflects painstaking, multiple pickings of perfectly botrytized fruit, with plenty of gold-green grapes to insure juiciness, vivacity and flux. An intense and complex aromatic mingling of candied grapefruit and pineapple, quince jelly, pear drops, white raisin, musk and truffle leads to a palate of intense richness yet buoyant elegance and transparency to mineral, floral and spice nuances. The superb finish manages to be refreshingly, invigoratingly juicy and salty while at the same time possessing honeyed richness and implosive concentration of candied citrus and overripe orchard fruits. (Furthermore - in this case I can't help but write it explicitly - this represents astonishingly good value for a wine of its quality and sort.) While already irresistible, this has at least a good quarter century in it.

Author: David Schildknecht