Tasted blind at the Burgfest 2014 tasting, the 2014 Volnay 1er Cru Santenots from Glantenay has really come good. It has a showy, quite oaky bouquet that says more about the winemaking than the terroir, although it improves with aeration and more blue fruit begins to show through. There is something New World about this, though not necessarily in a negative way—more exuberant and joyful. The palate is medium-bodied with chewy tannin, moderate depth, spicier than its peers especially toward the finish, and with time it delivers the fleshiness and the bravura that define Volnay Santenots. After my initial skepticism, I ended up adoring this. Tasted September 2017.

The Glantenay 2008 Volnay Santenots – representing around a one-third crop shortfall due to hail – marries aromas of ripe blackberry and cassis (and their distilled equivalents) with notes of damp forest floor, comes to the palate firmly tannic as well as bright, and finishes with tart fruit persistence and peppery pungency. This manages to narrowly avoid the negative synergy of tannin and tart acids to which many 2008s succumb, but it is a close-enough call that if I were going to cellar some, I’d think along the lines of 6-8 years and monitor bottles regularly along the way. Young Thierry Glantenay – whom I met for the first time this March – has the luck to have inherited old vines acquired or planted by his grandfather in some of the most prestigious sites of Volnay, Pommard, and Puligny, and is applying to them evident care and intelligence, given which facts it isn’t surprising – even though it was news to me – that his cellar is a superb source of Burgundy. Glantenay’s finished 2008s are in the low-13s of alcoholic percentage, having for the most part been boosted by one-half to one degree. All of them were in tank when I tasted, and none were due to be filtered at bottling, although the village Volnay, Caillerets, and Rugiens had been lightly “pre-filtered” to deal with what Glantenay deemed excess turbidity.Importer: Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville , PA; tel. (610) 486-0800