Plum and tart cherry ally themselves to charred meat and chalk in the Roty 2006 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Fontenys. A fine deposit of tannin across the palate in no way blunts a sense of penetration and vivacity. This finishes with smoky intensity, ripe yet tart fruit skin, and myriad mineral nuances. A sparer and far less winsome wine than most of those in the present collection, it seems to want at least 2-3 years in bottle but will probably come across well for the better part of a decade. It took more than an hour open in a glass for this to really display subtle mineral and carnal complexity, and even so, it doesn't for now register quite the sense of class difference that one has come to expect, or that this year's renditions from Clair and Serafin already display. The balance of this superb, small cru, incidentally, belongs to Huguenot and to the huge Rebourseau domaine, which is for sale.
Philippe Roty is among the many growers to assert that under-ripe fruit rather than rot was what really drove his 2006 selection process. "But, hail or no hail, I do a strict triage regardless; and besides" he notes with a laugh, "it hails every year in at least one part of Marsannay." He picked in a relative hurry the last week of September, because "as far as I'm concerned, above 13% potential alcohol you have surmaturite, and that's not good." Besides, like the Mugneret sisters and a considerable number of other top-notch growers, Roty favors routinely – if only slightly – chaptalizing his entire range to promote longer and, he believes, flavor- and texture-enhancing fermentation. (While I have mentioned in the text of my tasting notes those wines that are part of the personal domaine of Philippe Roty and bottled under his name, I have not reflected this in the naming of the wines, as the same label is used for those as for the Domaine Joseph Roty wines and they are all vinified and aged together by the same team.) Importer: Alain Junguenet, Wines of France, Mountainside, NJ; tel. (908) 654-6173
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