The 2008 Nuits-Saint-Georges Villages from Domaine Leroy is beginning to drink very well, bursting from the glass with a complex bouquet of cinnamon, blood orange, peony, cassis, blackberry and raw cocoa. On the palate, the wine is sappy, expansive and medium-full, with an ample mid-palate, fine-grained tannins and a penetrating, saline finish—weightless but intense. In this vintage Bize-Leroy opted to combine the Nuits lieux-dits that she usually bottles separately: Aux Allots, Aux Bas de Combe and Lavières.

Bize-Leroy’s 2008 Nuits-St.-Georges – which assembles this year the collective fruit of les Allots, Bas de Combe, and Lavieres – is dominated by game and cooked red raspberry, its palate creamy and glycerin-endowed as well as possessed of an outright lactic cast. A vintage-typical tartness emerges slightly awkwardly in the undeniably long finish, but this is dense in a rather opaque way. Whether – and, if so, at what energy level – it achieves harmony, remains to be seen. It would be hard to imagine a much greater contrast in a single collection than that of this wine with the Pommard Vignots that immediately preceded it (in its author’s chosen order of presentation). Lalou Bize-Leroy reports average 2008 Pinot Noir yields of 13 hectoliters per hectare, almost absurdly tiny even by her singular standards. Malos were a bit later than usual but were finished by summer, and the wines bottled – as usual – in December. Yet – also as usual – if their development was thereby in any way stunted, you certainly won’t detect it in the bottle today! The best of these display a sense of transparency; levity; and – even when rich and head-spinningly complex – a sheer sense of refreshment and invigoration that I have seldom encountered in other great wines from these sister estates. (Please note that my account of the complete 2007 red collection at Leroy was published in issue #189.)Importer: Martine’s Wines. Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-040