A wine of which – like the corresponding Combettes – there are mere 50 cases (here from contract rather than estate fruit), Jadot’s 2007 Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles is darkly shaded from its nose of toasted hazelnut, tobacco, moss, peach kernel, and quarry dust; through its firm, palpably extract-rich palate; and to a long, stony, slightly bitter (lemon zest, peach kernel, toasted nut) finish that is implacable but full of energy, and with some time in the air picked up vibratory intensity. Lardiere thinks this especially needs to recover from bottling. It’s impossible for me to imagine it failing to gain further depth and richness with a little time, nor its being worth following for fewer than half a dozen years. Jadot is one of those addresses where I confess to having feared that the combination of this vintage’s marked impression of acidity and relative leanness with Jacques Lardiere’s love of precision and merely selective use of malo-lactic fermentation might result in a dearth of sensual appeal. And he is the first to admit that a relatively high proportion of malic acidity was present in 2007, along with a danger of vegetal notes. But Lardiere took most of his 2007s all the way through malo, and my fears were at worst marginally realized. An overarching caveat is that these wines received higher dosages of sulphur (25 versus 15 grams) at bottling than those of other recent vintages, and will – Lardiere opines – take longer to shake off a certain pungency or hardening, but it did not find that alarming. As usual, I could not take time to taste all of Jadot’s many bottlings, which are less numerous this year, in any case, than in 2006. Incidentally, the first vintages of Domaine Ferret Pouilly-Fuisse under Jadot’s ownership and Lardiere’s direction – on which I shall report at a later time – are tremendously successful, preserving and even elevating critical elements of the personality that has long wines from that estate so memorable. Importer: Kobrand, Inc., New York, NY; tel.(212) 490 9300