2008 Chambolle Musigny La Combe d'Orvaux

The Perrot-Minot 2008 Chambolle Musigny La Combe d’Orveau Vieilles Vignes smells of leather and wood smoke along with fresh black raspberry and brown spices. Ripe berries, tar, peat, chalk, and crushed stone saturate a palpably dense and abundantly if finely tannic palate with sap-like viscosity and concentration, making for a rather austere impression. Hints of soy and cherry pit add further complexity in a finish whose grip seems to leave indelible marks in your mouth. This site – adjacent to the Orveaux section of Echezeaux, overlooking the Clos Vougeot, and classified as part of Musigny until Perrot-Minot’s grandfather’s time – seems always to give impressive results, but here they are impressively singular, although some might say this Pinot flirts with hyper-concentration. It should be fascinating to chart its evolution not just over the next 12-15 years but also short-term, as it might relax a bit and display more sweetness of fruit once it has put bottling further behind it. Some years, Perrot-Minot renders two bottlings from this parcel, one from its oldest vines, but there is only one this year. Christophe Perrot-Minot pursued to extremes in 2008 the fanatic selectivity on which he prides himself, though he would have been happy had that not been necessary. He claims this triage was almost entirely for the removal of under-ripe, not of botrytis-infected, berries. (And yields from these – as the labels remind us – universally old vines are always extremely low even before fruit hits the estate’s two sorting tables.) The concentrated, lavishly ripe but densely-structured style associated with this domaine is tempered by the relatively low alcohol (wines finished – after light chaptalization – in the upper 12s or low 13s) and efficacious acidity of the 2008 vintage, as well as by a relatively gentle extraction that he reports was forced on him by fruit whose virtues could easily have been spoiled by pigeage. Given the way these wines turned out, I, for one, am very glad no attempt was made to punch the musts into further extractive submission! Perrot-Minot opines that many 2008s were permanently stunted by excess sulfuring – which exacerbated the lateness of malo-lactic transformation – and by too little time between the end of malo and bottling, ending up “square” (he used the English word) and “lacking in fat. There was also a danger,” he acknowledged, “that one could end up with wines too concentrated, or that lack purity of aroma and don’t express their terroir.” And in another response to the inherent intensity but also limitations of the fruit, new wood this year was held to a maximum of 40%. Most of the 2008s had been bottled recently when I tasted them in April, but some as early as January. (For details on many of the Perrot-Minot vineyard sites and old vines, consult my reports in issues 170 and 186. I did not have time, unfortunately, to taste any of the 2007s from this estate except a very early stage.) Importer: Martine’s Wines, Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400