2005 Volnay Champans

The 2005 Volnay Champans (my sample drawn on the eve of its racking and assemblage) offers what seems by now like the Prieur trademark, namely abundant bright black raspberry fruit. Clear and juicy, with a wonderful transparency to its deep mineral and fungal shadings and an incipiently creamy textural allure, this finishes with outstanding length, brown spices and black pepper joining the sauteed mushrooms and sweet raspberry fruit. Nearly all bottlings from this negociant – on an upward path since the influx of Rodet capital in the early ‘90s – in fact originate in the Domaine Jacques Prieur. Martin Prieur and his team have striven to capture purity of fruit through gentle extraction, although for my taste I found some of their 2005s overly confectionary due to the influence of toasty new wood on already very sweetly ripe raw material. After malo – which was generally quite late here this year – the wines were sulfured but not yet racked. Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700.