The wood elements here dovetail effectively with the fruit. From fruit he purchases, originating in the Champs Traversins and Poulailleres sections of the appellation, Ambroise’s 2005 Echezeaux smells of black raspberry mingled with bitter-sweet floral notes and high-toned almond and cherry distillate. Vanilla and brown spices complement the fruit on the palate, where this is relaxed and open compared to most of Ambroise’s wines. An abundance of pure, raw berry fruit and tactile vividness of cinnamon and allspice informs the finish. This goes down easier and should mature more rapidly than most of the Ambroise 2005 crus.
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
粵公網(wǎng)安備 44030502006249號