As it almost always is, this is not quite as elegant as the Bèze but it's slightly more complex with dense and more deeply pitched yet extremely cool and restrained red and blue fruit aromas nuanced by a broad range of earth, game and underbrush hints, many of which carry over to the pure and relatively refined medium full-bodied flavors that are complex, vibrant and perfectly balanced on the gorgeously long finish. This is brimming with potential and while it too will require plenty of patience, its class and grace are such that it will be approachable in its youth; even so, I would counsel waiting. In a word, magnificent. Tasted: Jan 01, 2011 Score: 96 Drink: 2025+ Issue 41 Allen Meadows; Burghound

Eric Rousseau was away the day of my visit and thus I discussed the 2008 vintage and tasted with his assistant Frédéric Robert. Robert's take on the vintage is that "we had a good flowering but things degraded shortly thereafter and August was just terrible. In fact, by the beginning of September, we were beginning to wonder if we would even have a harvest as the véraison was not even finished! After the 12th of September however, things improved markedly, especially because the north wind concentrated the grapes, dried up the rot and seemed to galvanize the maturation process. Moreover, there was excellent luminosity even if not necessarily a lot of heat. We began picking on the 25th and brought in fruit with an average potential alcohol of about 12.5%. Eric elected to do a normal vinification of around an 18 day cuvaison. The colors and extractions came easily and we were able to treat the musts very gently, which was probably a very good idea in a vintage where the ripeness levels were uneven and thus it would have been easy to extract harsh or bitter tannins.