Bouchard’s 2008 Nuits-St.-Georges Porrets St.-Georges – an estate wine beginning with the 2007 vintage – smells of sweet, smoky machine oil, dark cherry, black pepper, and dark chocolate; fills the mouth with dusty tannins as well as sweet fruit; and finishes with peppery pungency and crushed stone. This impressively ripe and rich, relatively broad exemplar of 2008 wants a bit for finesse, but should certainly keep well for at least the better part of a decade, and might in the process refine itself. I did not taste the corresponding Les Damodes. Director-winemaker Philippe Prost made no attempt to minimize the challenges of 2008 and was careful to distinguish between its wind-borne concentration and genuinely ideal phenolic maturity (approached more nearly this year in white than red). He opined that the wide window afforded for relaxed picking despite the late calendar date was critical, since the levels of ripeness were so disparate from one site to another. That said, he showed me an outstanding collection of Pinots. Ironically, as he pointed out, ripeness was also disparate in one of the two earliest vintages on record, 2007, yet picking – while fitful – was anything but relaxed due to the pressure of rot. And here, too, Bouchard scored excellent successes. By means of, where necessary, “swapping lees” between barrels to inoculate stubborn lots, Prost says he was able to get all of his 2008s through malo-lactic conversion in timely fashion, which he considers especially important with Pinot. Bottling of the 2008 reds – with a few exceptions mentioned in my notes and due to have been bottled in April – took place in December and January, the same schedule adopted for their 2007s. I did not have an opportunity to taste nearly all of Bouchard’s vast collection from either vintage, and have in the text of my notes indicated a few from among their 2008s that I take to represent significant omissions. (I have not noted “Domaine” to distinguish those wines that are part of the Bouchard, except in cases where there is another otherwise eponymous wine.)Importer: Henriot, Inc, New York, NY; tel. (212) 605-6767

A firm wine from a cool vineyard. It is structured, dry and solid, the fruit dominated by tannins. There is an austere character here that obviously needs time to fill out. Give it five years.——R.V.(12/31/2010)—— 92