For me, nothing beats tasting a spectacular wine from a winery largely unfamiliar to me. The thrilling, dark-colored Clos St.-Denis offers a luxurious black berry-filled nose and gorgeously spicy mouth jam-packed with milk chocolate, floral red fruits, candied orange peel, earthiness and wax. Armed with an awesomely thick texture, this full-bodied, fabulously explosive beauty requires 7 years of cellaring and will hold its peak for 8-9+ years. The Domaine Arlaud rarely receives much attention from the wine press, in large part because the wines can be uninspiring and blatantly commercial. However, thanks to the efforts of Peter Vezan and David Hinkle of North Berkeley Imports, this estate is now producing splendid wines. But readers should be very careful when acquiring them. The ratings in this issue (111) are for the special cuvees made specifically for North Berkeley, other bottlings from different importers will not be the same wines. As Herve Arlaud candidly pointed out, "the North Berkeley cuvees are 100 times better than mine." What are the differences in winemaking? Arlaud's regular bottlings are fined and filtered and only see a maximum of 10% new oak. North Berkeley's cuvees are neither fined nor filtered, are aged in lavish quantities of new oak, and are bottled by hand using a small contraption that looks as if it were borrowed from a museum of vigneron's artifacts. Kudos to Arlaud for (1) having the courage to try the Vezan and Hinkle-inspired techniques and, (2) the honesty to recognize the vast difference in quality between his regular bottling and these cuvees. This note is the result of tastings I did in Burgundy between January 7 and January 29. The wine was tasted from cask, not bottle. Pinot Noir, a fragile varietal, reacts poorly to fining, filtration, and careless bottling techniques, I recommend caution when considering buying a red burgundy based on cask samples. I called it as I tasted it, and hope the bottled wine reflects the quality of the samples I was provided. Importer: A Peter Vezan Selection, imported only by North Berkeley Imports, Berkeley, CA; tel (510) 848-8910.