2008 Gevrey Chambertin En Champs

A Mortet 2008 Gevrey-Chambertin En Champs introduces a caramelized note reminiscent of singed vanilla cookie dough in the nose, offering counterpoint to bitter- and tart-edged yet confitured black fruits. Notes of sea spray and cumin call to mind the Bourgogne and old vines Gevrey in this same collection. The caramelized and tart are less well-integrated before bottling than are the wine’s bitter and sweet elements, but there is no mistaking another real ball of energy or the sheer length of this wine’s bright finish. Given that it had only emerged from malo a bit over a month before I tasted it, this might well have gained by the time it is bottled and ought to in any event prove worth following for the better part of a decade. Arnaud Mortet was one of several young Burgundy growers to remind me that he had never before witnessed anything remotely like 2008 even in the sense of a vintage about which he was forced to at one point confront the sinking feeling “perhaps the fruit simply won’t ripen.” In the event, he need not have worried, because his knack, low yields (encompassing this year three separate green harvests), and outstanding vineyards teamed-up for a fine collection. Mortet pursued a regimen of very gentle fermentative extraction – as much from stylistic proclivity, though, as from caution –chaptalizing at most a half a degree, and then only on non-cru lots. This was also a vintage with malo-lactic fermentations later than any Mortet had previously witnessed, but I suspect that if his late, great father Denis – or for that matter his grandfather – could testify, they would have said the same. Some lots did not finish until the spring of last year, as a result of which neither Mortet’s Fixin nor his basic village Gevrey were not testable when I last visited. (Nor, unfortunately, did I have opportunity to taste any of Mortet’s 2007s.) Importer: Martine’s Wines, Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400