2007 Gevrey Chambertin Champs Chenys

Medium red. Aromatic nose combines red fruits, smoke and loamy earth. Sweet, sexy and broad, with enough energy to maintain its shape. In an early-drinking style, finishing with soft tannins and nice persistence. Today this seems more successful than the 2008 version.

Red-ruby. Expressive aromas of black cherry and licorice. Supple and sweet, with a distinctly lush texture and nice integration of its 50% new oak component. A very pliant style, finishing with very good length and dusty tannins. (The basic Gevrey-Chambertin was quite reduced and a bit tough, with its tannins cutting off its fruit. I'll wait to try it in its finished form next year.)

Philippe Roty’s 2007 Gevrey-Chambertin Champs-Chenys Vieilles Vignes displays clearer, more penetrating fruit along with similar smoke and spice to the “regular” Joseph Roty bottling. It’s also firmer in texture and tends toward hints of peppery pungency and a stony austerity that is alleviated by deep marrow-rich meatiness and sheer juicy berry fruit persistence. Here is a 2007 that could certainly benefit from a few years of bottle maturation, and I would not hesitate to hold some for the better part of a decade. ||Philippe Roty insists that because of his rigorous canopy-management and green harvesting, plus a further late summer crop-drop, rot was not the problem for him in 2008 (or for that matter in 2007). But ripeness, he readily acknowledged, was. “In 2008, we simply lacked 8 or 10 days of sunshine,” he concludes, admitting that he harvested his lesser terroirs first (beginning September 23) and his grand crus last. “Which would you want to make sure ripens, Bourgogne or Charmes Chambertin?” he asked with a rhetorical laugh. This reversal of normal procedure – when taken together with the cautious extraction Roty felt committed to buy unripe pips – resulted in a 2008 collection that is mildly disappointing in its lowest echelons and among village Gevreys, though the Marsannays continued to offer considerable interest for their modest prices, whereas they were decidedly weaker partners in 2007. (Since the 2008 hail in Marsannay hit largely in the Chenove direction, it had little effect on Roty’s locations.) Tasting at the press and halting pressing as soon as bitterness or under-ripeness were detected was, says Roty, another critical factor in rendering satisfying 2008s. Malos – other than two stubborn whites on which Roty simply gave up! – finished here on a normal schedule at the end of their first winter, and thus in no way compromised his plan to as usual bottle the wines in April. I tasted in late February a pre-assemblage set aside for me two weeks in advance of my visit because in the meantime all of the lots had been sulfured in barrel. Wine Advocate.June, 2010