Fournier’s 2008 Marsannay Trois Terres Vieilles Vignes –tasted from tank – offers a delightful and unusual impression of yeasty butter-pastry with a tart red currant and cherry filling, its alternation of creaminess and brightness persisting all the way through to a finish also marked by citrus oil pungency, faint bitterness of cherry pit, and a hint of caramel from barrel. Suggestions of narcissus and iris waft across the nose and palate here as well. Here is a candidate for at least 6-8 years of aging.
Laurent Fournier’s proclivity for larger barrel sizes – one I generally applaud – and for racking his wines out of them after 14 months, exacerbated the CO2 retention in 2008s that had been late and long in malo. He terminated one early bottling run – in February, much later than normal, and just before my visit – when he realized the wine was too gaseous and unresolved to merit early enjoyment. Additionally, the aggressive acids and delayed malolactic transformation seemed to accentuate the extent to which some of his 2008s took on awkward flavors of oak that might nonetheless integrate with time. For these reasons, I must deliver a somewhat tentative report on wines that in recent years have proven to offer excellent value. Fournier started picking already on September 22, and said the work went quicker than in 2007 when ripeness in his sites was even less regular. (Fournier’s 2009s, incidentally, look to constitute his most impressive collection yet.)
A Thomas Calder Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011-33-1-46-45-15-29; Also a Cellar Door Selection, Columbia , MD; tel. (410) 309-6063
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