From an unjustly little-known Beaune cru (this one – featuring iron-rich soil – located just across the Autoroute from the Clos de la Figuine) the Prieur 2005 Beaune Champs Pimont had not been racked or assembled yet when I tasted a sample compilation from barrel. This smells of resins, machine oil, cherries, and a bit much of new oak. In the mouth, an imposing brightness and sweetness of raspberry and cherry is enhanced by a good shaking to free the fruit from slight reduction. A note of extraneous oak again intervenes in the finish, which exhibits a bit of a rough spot in any event. This will need a little time to sort itself out. Nearly all bottlings from this negociant – on an upward path since the influx of Rodet capital in the early ‘90s – in fact originate in the Domaine Jacques Prieur. Martin Prieur and his team have striven to capture purity of fruit through gentle extraction, although for my taste I found some of their 2005s overly confectionary due to the influence of toasty new wood on already very sweetly ripe raw material. After malo – which was generally quite late here this year – the wines were sulfured but not yet racked.Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700.