On the sole occasion when I tasted it, Ambroise 2006 Cotes de Nuits-Villages – from parcels bordering the Clos de la Marechale and Clos de l'Arlot monopoles – was a bit reduced, ironic given that it was sealed with natural cork, while his two Bourgogne employed screw caps, a closure often indicted for encouraging reduction. Even after a good shaking, this remained quite prominently gamey in aroma and stiff in texture. That said, it is admirably ripe (of a blackberry and beet root sort), densely-concentrated, and fine-grained in tannin, inviting hope for its potential. Until a couple of weeks before I tasted it, Ambroise claimed, it had been the most open and generous red in the collection. I would plan to revisit this in order to assess its likely further evolution.
It came as no surprise that Bertrand Ambroise would strive for ripe, concentrated, structured Pinots even in 2006, but I was amazed at the degree to which he succeeded with an approach that by his own admission was little different from that he had taken with his 2005s. Ambroise played-down a hypothesis I had begun to develop that Nuits-St.-Georges was especially favored in 2006, and added that he experienced less variability in ripeness from one Cotes de Nuits vineyard to another than was to be the case in 2007. Triage in 2006, reports Ambroise, was minimal, and performed primarily on cull under-ripe, not rot-afflicted bunches and berries. He left the young wines on their lees as long as he felt able, in order to retain a sense of freshness and vivacity, he said, as much as to enhance what was already manifestly going to be an unusual amount of body and palpable density for the vintage. (For further details concerning Ambroise's general methodology, readers are referred to my report in issue 171. As in other instances, I have not noted distinguished in their formal descriptions between estate wines and those Ambroise farms on contract.)
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