2010 Vosne Romanee Beaumonts

Little parcel – just one and a half casks, 100% new. Sulphited in October. Very luscious and almost animal. Fresh and lively and a bit drying on the end – maybe because of the new oak. Needs quite a bit of time. (JR)

The 2010 Vosne-Romanee Les Beaumonts is seriously beautiful from start to finish. It presents a deep, intense color next to the rest of the 2010s. Hard candy, mint, flowers and licorice are some of the notes that flesh out the palate. The Beaumonts has that extra degree of fleshiness that is missing in some of the other village and premier cru level wines. There is a single 350-liter barrel of this wine. Even though the barrel was new, there is no hint of oak whatsoever. This is a brilliant effort from Cecile Tremblay. Anticipated maturity: 2016-2031. Cecile Tremblay started harvesting on September 21. Like all of her colleagues, Tremblay suffered losses of 30-40% of her crop because of the weather conditions in 2010. Tremblay used 30% stems of the Echezeaux, but destemmed the fruit for all of her other wines as she didn’t feel the stems were fully ripe. As always, the approach to winemaking is pretty stripped down to the bare essentials. The wines age on their lees with no rackings until they are prepared for bottling. Lastly, nearly everything you read about Cecile Tremblay makes mention that she is the grand-niece of Henri Jayer. While that fact is interesting from a historical perspective and explains the source of her holdings, it doesn’t make her wines good or bad. Frankly, these wines don’t need to stand on anyone else’s reputation. They are exceptional in their own right. I also tasted the 2010 Vosne-Romanee Les Rouges du Dessus, a highly promising wine that was still finishing its malolactic fermentation in November 2011 and was therefore hard to read. Importer: Peter Weygandt, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800