From vines of 65 years and older in parcels situated below Les St.-Georges and Cailles – and aged in 70% new barrels (as opposed to the 40% of Ambroise's "regular" village Nuits) – the 2006 Nuits St.-Georges Vieilles Vignes offers alluring aromas and deep, sweet ripeness of black raspberry and cassis, wreathed in smoke and underlain with crushed stone. Palpably dense and with quite fine-grained tannin, it finishes with clean, vibrant fruit that is admirably transparent to fascinating mineral and raw carnal nuances, and unencumbered by any overt oakiness. It should have 6-8 year potential.
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.)
Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083
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