2006 Lucien Le Moine Echézeaux Grand Cru

Cassis and black cherry on the nose of Le Moine 2006 Echezeaux lead to a dense palate with gamey meatiness, peat-like smokiness, and salinity to match its big fruit, and a fine-grained but far from frictionless tanninity. Here is Echezeaux displaying its kinship to Clos Vougeot, an impressively broad-shouldered wine apt to need 4-5 years to show at its best and no doubt capable of a decade's rude good health. "There was too much fruit" on the vines in 2006, opines Mounir Saouma, "and at the same time too much tannin in the fruit." Early pickers therefore, in his opinion, risked getting "lots of primary flavors, but wines that weren't serious. So we started the aging process asking ourselves how we will make this wine less tannic and more serious. After malolactic," which is always late here, "the wines changed completely. But the bigger mistake in 2006 was to bottle early" - something which also never happens at this address - "because the wines needed some time on their lees to extract sweetness and depth, and for all of their elements to come together." The results this year here are spectacular, and need not shy from comparison with their very different 2005 predecessors. Note that with a few significant exceptions there are usually only 1-2 barriques (25-50 cases) of any given Lucien Le Moine wine. Also, despite the number of them I tasted, that did not comprise by any means the entire collection (a circumstance I have taken pains to remedy with 2007). For further details on Le Moine's proprietors and methodology - which, once again this year, included a significant amount of vinification with stems - consult my report in issue 171. Importer: Vintus, Pleasantville, NY; tel. (919) 769-3000