This displays real concentration and class as well as early surface polish and generosity. A 2005 Vosne-Romanee (from the Raviolles vineyard adjoining Nuits-St.-Georges) offers abundant spice and ripe black fruits in the nose, again a creamy, sweetly-rich palate, with hints of chocolate and caramel, but with meat and mineral substrate lending depth, and an impressively penetrating, infectiously-juicy finish. Sheer generosity and sappy vigor are key to this wine’s early appeal, because the 50% new wood attempts to get across its own less charming or interesting message. A faint roughness of tannin also intruding on the finish could be fleeting, and could stem from the one-third whole clusters that were included in this cuvee for the first time. (The grapes were perfect, comments Lecheneaut, and the always naturally low pH of wine from this site was ameliorated by the potassium-rich stems.) The Lecheneaut brothers – Vincent and Philippe – were still hoping to get the last of two wines (a Chorey-les-Beaune and one of two lots of village Nuits-St.-Georges, the final blend of which, while promising, could therefore not be fairly assessed) to go through malo at the time of my visit. But other than that, things were looking delicious indeed in this cellar. Alcohol levels came in almost shockingly low given the ripeness of flavors on display (in fact, the brothers chaptalized a bit to extend the fermentations) and most but not all of the wines had the requisite concentration to resist any obvious marking by their 50-100% of new oak. These are forward, early-flattering, often positively flamboyant wines for the vintage. The samples I tasted had been drawn in proper proportion just prior to their having been racked and assembled for bottling (which was imminent).Importer: Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832-9083.