The 2016 Chambertin Grand Cru includes the Clos de Bèze this year due to such small quantities, the younger vines completely killed (so there will be no Gevrey-Chambertin). It has a tightly wound bouquet, quite backward but unfurling in the glass, blackberry and raspberry fruit, a touch of sous bois. The palate is medium-bodied with chewy tannin, quite masculine and grippy with a bold, broad-shouldered finish. Fine, but I have a preference for the 2015.

The 2015 Chambertin Grand Cru does not include any whole bunch this year, but does include vines in Clos-de-Bèze. It matured in 70% new oak. It has a velvety smooth bouquet that is very seductive: black cherries, creme de cassis and iodine aromas that unfurl from the glass. The palate is well balanced with succulent ripe tannin. This is very juicy with very good weight in the mouth, although I would like to see more precision and terroir expression develop on the finish.

The 2013 Chambertin, which comes from the 65-year-old vines only, has a perfumed, more floral bouquet than the Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru. The palate is medium-bodied with quite sinewy tannins with blackcurrant pastilles, a touch of sea salt and a twist of cracked black pepper on the structured, quite masculine finish. Give this several years in bottle.

There is a tiny amount of Prieur 2008 Chambertin – most of the fruit from this site being bottled as “premier cru” due to its young vines – still in barrel when I tasted. Toast, resin, nutmeg, and caramel from barrel are more prominent in the nose than I would prefer, but on the palate licorice and ripe dark cherry offer convincing sweetness and a surprisingly supple texture and lingering, sappy finish are not interrupted by any even faintly gum-numbing or drying tannin. I don’t sense the advent of any real excitement, but I would not be surprised to see the wine gain in complexity prior to bottling and suspect it will merit cellaring for at least ten or a dozen years. Martin Prieur, oenologist Nadine Gublin, and their team hung tight in the 2008 vintage and ended up harvesting very ripe-tasting Pinots, at the price of yields dramatically reduced by the necessary selection (to the extent hail and green harvest had not already cut them back). As a group, these 2008s tended toward a not entirely felicitous alliance of tannic abrasion and toasty, smoky, ultimately slightly palate-drying new wood, although many of the wines showed more harmoniously when I re-tasted them in April than they had the month prior, and I have accordingly favored my later impressions in the notes that follow. It may well be true by some measure – as Gublin opined – that the 2008s here are more consistently ripe than were the 2006s, but for now I find more depth, harmony, and charm in the latter. Their 2007s – which the domaine began picking already on August 30 – are not currently displaying much of the charm they showed very early on, and while the estate’s staff hope is that this will be regained (and certainly the wines have “structure” in the sense of tannin), I continue to be skeptical in general about deferring those pleasures that this vintage offers. In many vineyards, incidentally, 2008 represented the third consecutive vintage in which Prieur had harvested scarcely more than 20 hectoliters per hectare. Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700

Leather, red licorice, cocoa powder, in the nose of Prieur’s 2007 Chambertin presage a stewed-fruit recapitulation of those themes on a broad but strongly tannic palate. The finish offers a rather muddled sort of richness, with prominent caramel and resin of new wood and slightly gum-numbing astringency. But as with other 2007s in this position, I am not convinced that for all of its tannin this really has structure for significant cellaring or the sort of personality that will become more interesting in the process. Certainly though, it should keep well-enough for at least 3-5 years and would be worth re-visiting and re-evaluating. Martin Prieur, oenologist Nadine Gublin, and their team hung tight in the 2008 vintage and ended up harvesting very ripe-tasting Pinots, at the price of yields dramatically reduced by the necessary selection (to the extent hail and green harvest had not already cut them back). As a group, these 2008s tended toward a not entirely felicitous alliance of tannic abrasion and toasty, smoky, ultimately slightly palate-drying new wood, although many of the wines showed more harmoniously when I re-tasted them in April than they had the month prior, and I have accordingly favored my later impressions in the notes that follow. It may well be true by some measure – as Gublin opined – that the 2008s here are more consistently ripe than were the 2006s, but for now I find more depth, harmony, and charm in the latter. Their 2007s – which the domaine began picking already on August 30 – are not currently displaying much of the charm they showed very early on, and while the estate’s staff hope is that this will be regained (and certainly the wines have “structure” in the sense of tannin), I continue to be skeptical in general about deferring those pleasures that this vintage offers. In many vineyards, incidentally, 2008 represented the third consecutive vintage in which Prieur had harvested scarcely more than 20 hectoliters per hectare. Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700