2005 Domaine Bruno Clair Savigny-lès-Beaune La Dominode 1er Cru

($90) Good deep red. Spicy, primary black fruit, mocha and truffle aromas show a slightly roasted character but gained in freshness as the wine opened in the glass. Big, lush, sweet and voluminous, with so much baby fat that it appears to be less tightly wound than usual. But there's plenty of structure underneath. Finishes with powerful, dusty tannins and some very ripe suggestions of mocha, maple syrup and truffle. Today this wine seems very marked by the vintage. This will need a good six or seven years of cellaring and will probably be perfect alongside game dishes.

Author: Stephen Tanzer

Issue: March/April 2008

A bit solid and stolid. Comes to a bit of a dead end.

Author: Jancis Robinson

Issue: 07/28/2007

A wonderfully complex earthy and spicy dark berry fruit nose leads to delicious, generous and fleshy middle weight flavors that are sweet, intense and quite finely structured, all wrapped in a finish of impressive length. This is quite firmly if deceptively structured as the tannic spine is completely buffered by the abundant sap. In a word, terrific.

Author: Allen Meadows

Issue: 1st Quarter, 2008

From vines planted in 1902, the Clair 2005 Savigny-les-Beaune La Dominodes is uncompromisingly concentrated, meaty, salty and pithy. Scents of wood smoke, tobacco, bitter black fruits and pungent herbs rise from the glass. This stains the palate like a medicinal remedy of black cherry, tincture of iodine, and herbal essences. (What's the disease? I'll catch it!) Amazingly sinewy, muscular and energetic, it epitomizes the uncompromising, lean Bruno Clair style, not to mention the fruit of vines too old to waste their juices trying to flatter the critics. Arguably the greatest wine in Savigny, Clair's Dominode nearly always needs close to a decade to repay its price, and this year I'd say 'longerƒ?_.

Author: David Schildknecht