2016 - Gevrey-Chambertin, Armand Rousseau

Tasted from bottle, Rousseau's 2016 Gevrey-Chambertin Village opens in the glass with a youthfully reserved bouquet of wild berry fruit, plums, peonies and orange rind mingled with suggestions of forest floor and cedar. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, supple and sapid, with lively acids, good depth at the core and fine structuring tannins that subtly assert themselves on the finish. Even this communal bottling—which contains declassified premier cru fruit—is quite introverted at this stage, and readers with bottles in their cellars are advised to forget them for the better part of a decade.

(this wine includes premier cru fruit from Clos Prieur and Estournelles Saint-Jacques, as well as grapes from five village parcels): Medium red. Red cherry and raspberry aromas are complicated by savory soil scents. A step up in complexity and plushness from the Clos du Château, conveying lovely sweetness and salty mineral notes to its energetic red fruit and earth flavors. This seamless, fully ripe village wine spreads out to saturate the palate on the ripely tannic, echoing finish.

A bit more of this made than the Clos du Château. Very fruity and juicy with a certain sweetness. Not that concentrated but charming. Polished tannins. Light chew on the end – a longer-term prospect than the Clos du Château. Long. (JR)