Smoky black tea, beef bouillon, raw venison, biter cherry pit and ripe blackberry make for a striking nose to Liger-Belair's 2009 Nuits-St.-Georges Les St.-Georges. Firm in feel, and with its dense meat and bitter-edged black fruit underlain by a sensation of crushed stone, this manages to avoid austerity – and, more remarkably, opacity – thanks to its primary juicy freshness; sweet, high-toned inner-mouth esters suggestive of distilled fruits; and to a wealth of mineral nuances (marine, crustacean, peaty) that manage to shine through in a penetrating and resplendent finish. I would not plan to revisit it for a couple of years, and expect it will be worth following for at least 8-10.
Thibault Liger-Belair commenced picking on September 23 with his Les St.-Georges, as it was already pushing 14% alcohol. That said, he thinks biodynamic vineyard practices have already in his second year of employing them begun to help him close the gap between sugar accretion and ripeness of flavor that has in recent years become a feature of so many harvests in Burgundy (and, of course, not only there). "Every cluster had to be examined and sorted this year," Liger-Belair asserts (with the mere 28 hectoliter per hectare average to back him up), "and you had to be very gentle in fermentation. But I think the results are light without being meager." "Light"? I'm not sure he and I have the same sense of what's "leger," then! "I tried to bottle the wines on the cusp of reduction," he explains, "again, to guard the freshness and fruit and promote longevity." Tasting from bottles that had been open the better part of a day, I was impressed with the wines' stamina, but of course that does not necessarily translate into long bottle aging. (The wines from purchased fruit in this line up – labeled "Thibault Liger-Belair Successeurs” – are identified in the text of the notes, but not as part of the wines' descriptions, since the names used are virtually identical and there is no overlap in appellations. Incidentally, I did not taste this year's Chambolle Les Gruenchers, nor one or two wines of lesser appellation which Liger-Belair did not think were showing acceptably on the occasion of my last visit.)
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