The 2014 Clos Vougeot Grand Cru comes from the bottom, middle and top of the vineyard, one barrel each then blended together. The bouquet is poised and delineated with wet limestone scents infusing the red berry fruit, brisk and vivid. The palate is medium-bodied with crisp red cherry and strawberry fruit, tensile and structured with a lovely saline thread that lends this Clos Vougeot animation and tension. This is a very fine Clos Vougeot brimming with nascent energy.

The 2013 Clos Vougeot Grand Cru is one of Mounir's finest wines this year. Sourced from around the famous walled vineyard, it has a cohesive bouquet with straight-laced brambly red berry fruit that are very well defined. The palate is medium-bodied with strict crisp tannin, very good acidity and lovely poise on the sustained finish. If you seek an elegant Clos Vougeot than this will be the ticket.

There are three barrels of 2010 Clos de Vougeot from the top, middle and bottom of the vineyard. The nose is more reticent than the Echezeaux at first, although it slowly unfolds with hints of powdered chalk informing the fresh red brambly fruit. The palate is medium-bodied with a crisp, poised entry. At the moment it needs to develop a little more fruit and flesh in the middle that is a tad hard at the moment, although it should develop more fatness after bottling. The finish is precise, but conservative, perhaps a little more abrupt than the Echezeaux. Drink 2014-2025. I have intermittently encountered the wines of Lucien Le Moine over the years and even spent an evening dining with the man behind it, Mounir, on one admittedly inebriated dinner a few years ago. But it was time to visit the winery tucked away down a side-street in Beaune, and taste through an enormous selection of wines with the man himself. Since his first vintage in 1999, he has focused on buying fruit that expresses individual lieux-dits, so that his cellar consists of dozens of micro-Cuvees that take a whole morning to taste through. He is an extremely principled winemaker with strong, some might say controversial beliefs. Even before entering the barrel cellar, he opined that too many white Burgundies are picked too late and that both the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations are completed too rapidly. Mornir likes two summers to complete the elevage and feels that too many vignerons bottle too early. He also used minimal sulphur for his wines, informing me that though his wines often start out deeper in color, they tend to become paler as they mature in bottle. I asked him about his opinion on the two vintages that we tasted together, the 2010 and 2011. “The 2010 and 2011 vintages have a lot of common points: low yields, fresh summer, both starting fruity and perhaps a little uniform,” he explained. “Then a year later, their personalities started coming out. The evolution of both vintages is similar. After a year and half they began to gain depth. When we picked 2010, people were talking about a light vintage, but now that is forgotten because they are so powerful. In 2011 they did the same. The 2010s achieved maturity naturally, but in 2011 we had to chaptalize most of the wines a little. I think it is an old style of Burgundy, how the wines were made before 1995. In 2010 we talk about tannins, but in 2011 we talk about more dry extract. You feel the presence of the wine but they are not dry. The 2010s finish with firm tannins, so in terms of longevity I think they will close down in a couple of years and then need another eight years. But I don’t think this will happen with the 2011. They are more like 2001 and 2007 that show their harmony early. They will be enjoyable over the next 15 years. The purity of the terroir in 2011 is exceptional, whereas in 2010 you have the power.” Apart from my marathon morning journey through Lucien le Moine’s 2011s, we sashayed over to the 2010s to see how a dozen were shaping up in bottle. These were bottled around August 2012 with a little sulphur in June. The bottles were double decanted at 90 minutes before tasting. Importers: Vintus LLC, Pleasantville, NY; tel. (914) 769-3000; Atherton Imports, Menlo Park, CA; tel. (650) 328-6639

The 2009 Clos de Vougeot is a driven, focused wine laced with red fruits and sweet spices. This is subtle yet persistent, with elegant, beautifully crafted tannins that make it an unusually refined, sexy Clos de Vougeot. Anticipated maturity: 2019-2029. These wines from proprietor Mounir Saouma are impressive. Saouma sources small lots of wine from the best sites in Burgundy and does all of the post-alcoholic fermentation elevage in his cellar in Beaune. Saouma’s approach calls for long, slow malos, extended contact on the gross lees and no fining or filtration prior to bottling. Saouma bottles an eye-popping 60 different wines, some sourced from more than one grower. Count me as a fervent believer in terroir. As much as I subscribe to the belief that specific plots of land can confer unique qualities to wines, the reality is that a variety of other factors are just as important, including the talent of the winemaker and the ambient qualities of the cellars in which wines are raised. What amazes me most about these wines – aside from the obviously very high quality – is that there is without question a distinctive house style that emerges across the range, despite the fact that they come from different sources and are acquired as wine rather than fruit. Saouma likes to describe his cellar as a library of Burgundy’s finest terroirs. That’s as good a description as any for these uniformly outstanding, compelling wines. Importer: Vintus LLC, Pleasantville, NY; tel. (914) 769-3000, Atherton Imports, Menlo Park, CA; tel. (650) 328-6639