The 2010 Vosne-Romanee is a huge wine bursting with dark cherries, plums, spices and minerals. Layers of flavor continue to blossom in this beautifully articulated, extroverted wine. This is yet another village level wine that outperforms in its category. I can hardly wait to see how it turns out in bottle. The Vosne is made from a parcel in Les Ravioles, on the border with Nuits St. Georges. Anticipated maturity: 2015-2025. This is a beautiful set of wines from Lecheneaut. The wines show marvelous detail and nuance in a highly attractive style that captures the best the vintage had to give. Unfortunately the 2010 Clos de la Roche was too reduced to evaluate. Vincent Lecheneaut began picking on September 24. The wines saw 5-6 days of old oak, followed by a cuvaison of 15-21 days.Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083

Blackberry, beet root, humus, peat, and marine saline-alkaline notes characterize the Lecheneaut 2008 Vosne-Romanee, a wine not without intrigue but rather charmless and stiff, its finish displaying a modest sense of sweetness but neither levity nor refreshment. I had some difficulty extracting the tip of my tongue from between my lips and incisors after chewing on it. I would anticipate this being best drunk over the next 4-6 years and one's simply taking a certain residual toughness into account. Vincent and Philippe Lecheneaut's 2008s had with three exceptions been assembled when I tasted them late last winter, but their malos had been extremely protracted and bottling was due to be later than usual. The brothers employed their usual contingent of new wood but backed-off somewhat on the inclusion of stems (employed at low level even in the village wines) and on pigeage, professing overall satisfaction with a vintage in which they testified to considerable nail-biting in the race between ripeness and rot, but whose fruit required, they said, less sorting than had that of 2007. I found the results here from 2008 on the whole formidably-concentrated but awkwardly marked by their wood and disappointingly lacking in charm or primary juiciness. The several 2007s I was able to taste point in the direction of more harmony and fun-in-drinking, and the Lecheneauts indicated that on the whole they find their 2007s more sweetly-fruited than their 2006s, which they suggest represents a role-reversal from those collections tasted in barrel.Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083

Vanilla, nutmeg, and star anise mingle with ripe, bitter-sweet black fruits in the nose of a 2006 Vosne-Romanee more refined in texture than the wines that preceded it in the Lecheneaut line-up. It was removed from barrel sooner, which in the context of 2006 fruit character may have made a difference. The polish here runs all the way through an exceedingly succulent and subtly-spiced and forest floor-inflected finish. I would plan to savor this over the next half dozen years. Vincent and Philippe Lecheneaut report having ended up with higher potential alcohol in their 2006 fruit than in 2005 – though not, they hasten to add, equally ripe flavors – and having accordingly performed scarcely any chaptalization, so that only a few of the wines finished at over 13%. The regimen of new wood was essentially unchanged from 2005, which I think worked to the disadvantage of a number of these 2006s, wines that – while very well made, and in some instances distinguished – suffer considerably by comparison with their immediate predecessors.Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083

This displays real concentration and class as well as early surface polish and generosity. A 2005 Vosne-Romanee (from the Raviolles vineyard adjoining Nuits-St.-Georges) offers abundant spice and ripe black fruits in the nose, again a creamy, sweetly-rich palate, with hints of chocolate and caramel, but with meat and mineral substrate lending depth, and an impressively penetrating, infectiously-juicy finish. Sheer generosity and sappy vigor are key to this wine’s early appeal, because the 50% new wood attempts to get across its own less charming or interesting message. A faint roughness of tannin also intruding on the finish could be fleeting, and could stem from the one-third whole clusters that were included in this cuvee for the first time. (The grapes were perfect, comments Lecheneaut, and the always naturally low pH of wine from this site was ameliorated by the potassium-rich stems.) The Lecheneaut brothers – Vincent and Philippe – were still hoping to get the last of two wines (a Chorey-les-Beaune and one of two lots of village Nuits-St.-Georges, the final blend of which, while promising, could therefore not be fairly assessed) to go through malo at the time of my visit. But other than that, things were looking delicious indeed in this cellar. Alcohol levels came in almost shockingly low given the ripeness of flavors on display (in fact, the brothers chaptalized a bit to extend the fermentations) and most but not all of the wines had the requisite concentration to resist any obvious marking by their 50-100% of new oak. These are forward, early-flattering, often positively flamboyant wines for the vintage. The samples I tasted had been drawn in proper proportion just prior to their having been racked and assembled for bottling (which was imminent).Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083.

Jammy red and black fruits are intermingled with spices in the profound aromatics of the 2002 Vosne-Romanee. Satin-textured, medium to full-bodied, and sappy, this wine is jam-packed with blackberries, candied red cherries, and syrupy raspberries. It is deep, concentrated, and reveals exceptionally well-ripened tannin in its long finish. Anticipated maturity: now-2012. Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083