From ancient vines in a little-known cru located between the upper edges of Cent Vignes and Marconnets, Ambroise’s 2005 Beaune Perrieres offers an aroma reminiscent of really ripe Cabernet Franc in its combination of black fruits, toasted nuts, bitter-sweet flowers, and machine oil. Blackberry, cooked plum and nut oils inform a palate of abundant but fine tannins, and notes of iodine, smoked meat and chalk add complexity to the wine’s long finish. This should be a good candidate for 6-8 years in the cellar.
Amboise characterized this year’s fruit as consisting of “perfect berries, solid and well-structured” from which he concluded it should all be de-stemmed and a cautious approach taken to extraction. But caution is relative. Bertrand Ambroise certainly vinifies with a fanatic dedication to quality, but also with no concessions to the faint of heart, and his formidably tannic 2005s will strike some tasters as hyper-concentrated and flirting with over-extraction. Perhaps a bit more refinement and differentiation might have been achieved with a less robust and woody approach? Ambroise works largely with 400-liter barrels in an effort to preserve fruit by diminishing the surface-to-volume ratio and thus the flavoring effects of new wood, but I cannot claim that I would have recognized that fact in the wines themselves.
Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083
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