This is a cuvée made from the younger vines (15-20 years old) of Clos des Forêts. It is more accessible in its youth, yet shows the breed of this terrific vineyard. A great value.
Producer note: I met with Jean-Pierre de Smet and his cellar master Olivier Leriche and they told me that 2005 appears to offer the best raw materials since 1999. By contrast, they said that "2004 is a vintage of pleasure with very silky tannins, excellent purity of expression and a vintage that should drink well young as it offers both finesse and délicatesse. The key to the vintage was to wait for phenolic ripeness and to help matters, we did lot of leaf thinning and most of it early on to promote exposure to the limited sunlight and for improved aeration. We did some tests and there was a big difference in maturity between rows where we leaf thinned and the control rows where we did not thin. July was very ugly and August was worse as there was lots of rain and had it not been for a great September, 2004 and would likely have been an eminently forgettable vintage. We began picking on September 28th and continued until October 6th and the second most important aspect of the vintage to encouraging solid phenolic maturity was a thorough triage. Luckily we escaped hail in Nuits but there was damage in Vosne so we devoted almost as many people to sorting as we did to picking to eliminate all substandard berries. Sugars though were surprisingly good given the limited heat and came in between 13 and 13.8%, which is more than respectable. Even with all this we felt it was important to not push the extraction as the skins were thin and maturities weren't high. We also destemmed more than usual at around 60%. Overall, the vintage strikes us as having the maturity of 2000 with the class of 1998 but with less austerity." (Château and Estate Wine Company for most states; Chambers and Chambers, CA; Burgundy Wine Company, NY; Jeroboam Imports, NY and Le Serbet/Becky Wasserman Selection, MA; Berry Bros and Rudd, Goedhuis & Co, Ian Howe, Oddbins and La Réserve, all for the UK). Alan Meadows, Burghound
