2008 - Morey-Saint-Denis 1er Cru Clos Sorbe Vieille Vigne, Fourrier

Fourrier’s 2008 Morey-St.-Denis Clos Sorbe – of which, as usual and unfortunately, there are but two barrels – leads with high-toned herbal concentrates; hints of distilled black fruits; and a smoky pungency akin to Szechuan pepper, all of which convey a strikingly intense combinatory synergy on a firmly – and indeed slightly grittily – tannic palate. This invigorating but youthfully recalcitrant (or slightly bottle-shocked) Clos Sorbe deserves to be reassessed later this year, although I feel sure, in terms of sheer longevity, that it is not going to decay for at least 8-10 years. Jean-Claude Fourrier left no doubt that he viewed 2008 under the aspect of a return to times and conditions he thought his generation would never have to face. “The most important determinant of quality in your range,” in 2008, he asserted, “was how willing you were to sacrifice on the sorting table.” He had only just bottled his 2008s when I tasted them at the end of February – with the exception of two wines that remained in tank, one a Combottes he had just warmed-up in a last ditch effort to push it across the lactic conversion line! “By last October,” he explains, “I was facing the situation that 5 casks out of 7 were at 80% of malic acid and the others at 20%. So you have the choice either to heat your cellar, or to make the – for me, painful – decision to bring the wine back together into vat for promoting natural inoculation. Otherwise, I would have been waiting until April, and I can hardly even consider two full years in cask for my wines To be honest, I hated my ‘08s for the first 14 months.” Primary fermentation also took place this year in large part through inoculation by utilizing whichever lots spontaneously kicked-in first as starters, because as Fourrier explained, “I’m not a fan of extended cold maceration, which means adding sulfur,” and with the ambient temperatures at which the 2008 fruit arrived in the press house, it could have taken a long time for many ferme