2005 - Musigny Grand Cru Cuvee Vieilles Vignes, Comte Georges de Vogue

Bright, dark, saturated red-ruby. Pungent, noble aromas and flavors of raspberry, flowers, white pepper and powdered stone. Enters the palate with a wonderful lightness, then mounts impressively toward the back and saturates the entire mouth with fruits, spices, minerals and earth. As flamboyantly sweet as this wine is today, it's most remarkable for its power, definition, energy and cut. The tannins are still a bit youthfully spiky but this extremely backward wine finishes with superb thrust, grip and persistence. It's hard to imagine that this wine won't gain in texture and complexity over the next 20 to 30 years of aging in a cold cellar.

My notes on the 2005 Musigny Vieilles Vignes represent a composite impression from a selection of barrels. There can be little question that this deep, dark wine displays its class of origin, indeed a class of its own in this year’s collection. Fresh black raspberry, pomegranate, blackberry, and iris dominate the nose and stain the palate. A wealth of spice, mineral, chalky and bitter-sweet floral nuances persistently wreath the fruit at all stages. This shows lovely creaminess of texture in counterpoint to the persistent freshness of fruit. The intensely rich yet refreshing palate saturation and tenacious cling exhibited auger well for extended cellaring yet don’t detract from an impression of utmost elegance and refinement. The domaine will begin bottling the wines in spring and all will, as usual, receive “the minimum, gentlest possible” filtration. Francois Millet notes that skin-to-juice ratios this year were as formidably high as those of 2003, yet thanks to relatively mild temperatures, the fruit retained what he terms a “sorbet-like presentation.” Dreyfus Ashby, New York, NY; tel. (212) 818-0770 and a Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93

From 25 to 55 year-old vines. Wonderfully subtly graded crimson. Very heady nose already. The malo finished in July 2006. Very complex and velvety already. This wine caresses the senses. Beautiful texture. Very, very fresh and elegant, lifted and lively. That precision of Amoureuses again but with much more voluptuousness. This wine expresses something that has absolutely nothing to do with ‘winemaking’ – juts place. Very fine tannins on the finish. Wonderful elegance. Seductive but in a very cerebral way somehow. This wine smells so amazingly fresh, in complete contrast to the more worked noses of the Dominique Laurent wines tasted earlier that day. Tasting the two wines alongside, it’s easy to imagine Amoureuses as a subset of the Musigny There is minerality, elegance and sensuality too. Real éclat. (JR)