The dark ruby-colored Pommard Clos Des Epeneaux aromatically offers deep black cherries, Asian spices and roasted herbs. It has a refined, well-balanced, thick-textured, full-bodied, highly-concentrated and extracted core of intensely powerful blackberries, cherries and boysenberries with complex notes of coffee and smoke. Its exemplary finish ends with a backbone of ripe, round tannin, providing it with the necessary structure for years of cellaring. Anticipated maturity: 2000-2007.
Comte Armand's famed Clos Des Epeneaux vineyard generally yields 32 hectoliter/hectare but the 1995 harvest (primarily due to Marchand's draconian sorting) only produced yields of 24 hectoliters/hectare. This monopole (solely owned) vineyard is composed of vines ranging from 10 to 65 years of age that Marchand harvests and vinifies in three lots: The first is made up of the 10-14 and 18 year old vines, the second from vines averaging 25 to 45 years of age, and the third is composed of the oldest vines, ranging from 50 to 65 years old. Prior to bottling, Marchand practices a distinctly un-Burgundian technique - he performs an assemblage - the art of taking distinctly different lots and blending them to produce a wine better than the sum of its individual components. I tasted all three of Marchand's lots and found the final blend to be superior to each component.
As always, ratings with a score in parentheses indicate the wine was tasted from cask, not bottle.
A Becky Wasserman Selection, French Fax # 011-33-3-80-24-29-70, various American importers, including Esquin Imports, San Francisco, CA; tel (415) 398-1200, Martin-Scott, Lake Success, NY; tel (516) 327-0808. And in Massachusetts: Classic Wine Imports, Boston, MA; tel (617) 731-6644.
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