Bertrand Ambroise les Tuvilains, Beaune 1er Cru, France

伯蘭特安布羅斯酒莊圖維賴（伯恩一級園）紅葡萄酒

點(diǎn)擊次數(shù)：2936

The 2012 Beaune 1er Cru Les Tuvilains has an attractive bouquet with red cherries, briary, raspberry leaf and sous-bois that is well-defined and well assimilated with the oak. The palate is medium-bodied with a fine redcurrant and cranberry opening before the tannins make their presence felt. They render the finish a little foursquare and serious, although with a couple of years in bottle this should meld together nicely. Drink now-2018. Following on from his 2011s, I tasted Bertrand’s bottled 2012s that were presented in London. I preferred these to last year’s crop, the wines showing a little more panache and delineation, although I would still prefer to see Bertrand achieve greater terroir expression. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083 and through Charles Taylor Wines (UK)

The 2011 Beaune 1er Cru Les Tuvilains has a respectable, slightly foursquare but delineated bouquet with crushed strawberry and raspberry preserve scents. The palate is medium-bodied with a clean and crisp opening. The tannins are fine and there is decent tension on the finish – blackcurrant, boysenberry and a touch of cracked black pepper. This is a conservative Pinot Noir but I suspect it should mellow and open nicely over the next two to three years. Drink now-2018. I have regularly tasted the wines from Maison Ambroise since I commenced the raft of Burgundy tastings in London. Bertrand Ambroise took over the running of the ancient Primeaux-Prissey- based negociant in 1987, and whenever I have met him, he seems to be a conscientious vigneron that cares deeply for his wine. The tenets here are all admirable: organic viticulture, handpicked fruit, rigorous sorting, minimal use of sulphur and so forth. But – and it is a big “but” – I have consistently found the wines to be smothered in superfluous new oak and at a time when many growers are generally reconsidering, and in many cases retreating from, its usage. Tasting through their 2011s seemed to say more about the cooperage than the individuality of the terroirs. Here, 100% new oak is used for both the premier and grand cru wines and it rendered them uniform and even a little passe. There is clearly high quality fruit here and there is also a keen focus upon creating the best wines possible. However, I have always felt that if Ambroise could dial down that new oak (not eradicate it completely) to a level commensurate with the fruit concentration in each cuvee, they would reveal far more personality. Still, there are some good wines to be found such as the Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Vaucrains and a respectable Corton-Rognets. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083

A smoked meat note on the nose of Ambroise’s 2008 Beaune Tuvilains morphs into a beef jerky-like impression on a palate firmly underlain with fine tannins and delivering the sort of concentrated black fruits I associate with this grower year after year. Exuberant finishing juiciness and pleasantly tart berry skin impingement reminiscent of the 2006 rendition offer nice counterpoint to toasted praline and resin, leaving me reasonably refreshed and with lips tingling. This needs a few years to open-up, I suspect, and ought to be worth following for the better part of a decade. Bertrand Ambroise picked late and captured impressively ripe material in 2008, though the strident side of the vintage is sometimes still in evidence in the resultant wines, and not always comfortably married with the ambitious extraction and high quotient of new wood that characterize his regimen. (For further details concerning Ambroise’s methods, consult my report in issue 171.) I did not, regrettably, have chance to taste any of Ambroise’s 2007s, which he characterizes, predictably, as having been much more open early-on than his 2008s and as for the most part being ideal to drink young.Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083

From a relatively large, low-lying premier cru southeast of town, a 2006 Beaune Tuvilains smells of cassis and sweetly-smoky machine oil; is amazingly silken and refined in texture for a youthful Ambroise Pinot, as well as juicy and open; and finishes with faintly beefy, smoky, stony, and pungent, somehow ferric notes suggestive of this site's proximity to Pommard and than in no way diminish its welcome quotient of refreshment. This should be well worth following for half a dozen years. It came as no surprise that Bertrand Ambroise would strive for ripe, concentrated, structured Pinots even in 2006, but I was amazed at the degree to which he succeeded with an approach that by his own admission was little different from that he had taken with his 2005s. Ambroise played-down a hypothesis I had begun to develop that Nuits-St.-Georges was especially favored in 2006, and added that he experienced less variability in ripeness from one Cotes de Nuits vineyard to another than was to be the case in 2007. Triage in 2006, reports Ambroise, was minimal, and performed primarily on cull under-ripe, not rot-afflicted bunches and berries. He left the young wines on their lees as long as he felt able, in order to retain a sense of freshness and vivacity, he said, as much as to enhance what was already manifestly going to be an unusual amount of body and palpable density for the vintage. (For further details concerning Ambroise's general methodology, readers are referred to my report in issue 171. As in other instances, I have not noted distinguished in their formal descriptions between estate wines and those Ambroise farms on contract.) Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083