The 2009 Puligny-Montrachet Vieilles Vignes is a beautifully radiant, expressive wine endowed with supple fruit and an accessible personality. The roundness of the fruit flows through nicely to the generous finish. Anticipated maturity: 2012+. Vincent Girardin is among the producers who have made the most dramatic changes in response to the issue of premature oxidation. Girardin has increased the amount of time his wines spend on their lees, has lowered new oak, has eliminated batonnage and has basically re-built his entire approach from the bottom up, which I have to say, is quite impressive. The 2009s were harvested beginning on September 15, with natural alcohols in the 12.5-13% range. The wines were bottled between mid-March and mid-May 2011. Today the 2009s are quite fresh and still showing some of the effects of their recent bottling. It is safe to say the wines Girardin is making today are quite different from those of the past.Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802

The Girardin 2007 Puligny-Montrachet Vieilles Vignes – assembled from numerous parcels with vines averaging fifty years' age – smells of ripe peach, grapefruit, and lily. Brightly citric and lusciously peachy on the palate, it is underlain by a savory, saline shrimp shell-like mineral tone I often associate with Chablis, and which here contributes to the positively lip-smacking, saliva-inducing finish. This is another delicious expression of vintage virtues: vivacity and refreshment with allied to sense of richness; and forward fruit allied to a distinctively mineral dimension. I would expect it to perform well for a half dozen years. Vincent Girardin picked until past mid-September, with most of his top sites being brought in only from the 10th; allowed skin contact he would have avoided until recent years; and beat the lees on his young wines only until Christmas, but then bottled – with a light fining, and in many instances no filtration – only in May, 2009 to maximize passive time on the lees. The regimen of new wood here (now 20-30% depending on cru) represents a drastic diminution in just the past several years, and the 2007s strike me as far more comfortable in their skins than those of 2004-2006, benefiting also from the freshness and vivacity that characterize the vintage. He picked a week too late in 2006, opines Girardin with hindsight, but then, this was almost unavoidable in at least some instances for a vintner with such huge acreage. Girardin finds his 2007s especially marked by the typicity of each individual site, not only to a greater degree than in the two more obviously ripe preceding vintages, but also than in 2008. This is an aspect he is convinced will gradually be enhanced by a conversion to biodynamic methods that is underway. Girardin's 2007 musts were selectively chaptalized and finished wines here are largely in the vicinity of 13% alcohol. As usual, given the vast array of estate and negociant wines at this address (the latter status noted, where applicable, in my texts), I was not able to take time for tasting them all; in particular omitting the generics.Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802