In bottle for just over a month, the 2005 Beaune Clos de la Figuine – from a Prieur monopole just above Cras – offers generous, sweet aromas of black cherry and plum, a texurally polished and amazingly opaque palate (to match its improbably dark color) that is full of fresh black fruit, creamy texture, and licks of smoke, spice and sassafras in the sweet, pure cherry fruit of its finish. This might not be an enormously complex Pinot (and will some minerality emerge?) but one that’s almost irresistible today and I can see no reason to defer its enjoyment. 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.