The 2009 Chassagne-Montrachet Morgeot Marquis de Laguiche is a beautifully layered wine graced with smoke, butter, hazelnuts and rich, generous fruit. This shows the broad shoulders of this part of Chassagne in its large-scaled fruit and boisterous personality. The flavors build impressively towards the boisterous, mineral-infused finish. Anticipated maturity: 2013+. I tasted the 2009s with Jerome Faure-Brac, Drouhin’s head winemaker. Interestingly, Faure-Brac chose to serve these wines a touch on the warm side, so I could observe their strengths and weaknesses more clearly. It was a high stakes move, especially in a warm vintage. I am not sure I would have had the guts to make that decision, but it speaks of great conviction….and the wines came through beautifully. The 2009 harvest began on September 21st, quite late for the year. New oak levels were down sharply, malos were blocked on a number of wines and the estate did no batonnage. The wines were racked once prior to being bottled.Importer: Dreyfus Ashby & Co., New York, NY; tel. (212) 818-0770

The Drouhin 2007 Chassagne-Montrachet Morgeot Marquis de Laguiche is the first rendition of this well-known bottling to indicate its vineyard of origin (granted that “Morgeot” actually functions more as a collective vineyard) on the label, with “1er Cru,” as before, in minuscule letters. Smoked meat, musk, pepper, and ocean spray notes in the nose remind one of the ways in which Cote d’Or Chardonnay can resemble Pinot. A correspondingly meaty sense of substantiality and broth-like sense or richness follow on the palate, albeit with sappy ripe white peach and tart hints of red berries rising to prominence as well. (This wine's strong senses of amplitude and ripeness, incidentally, are scarcely traceable to its alcohol, which is only 13.3%.) This finishes with forceful grip if less finesse than other Drouhin 2007s, its lush fruit and texture off set by prominent salinity, peppery pungency, and carnal depth. I would anticipate it being worth following from at least 6-7 years. Veronique Drouhin-Boss expressed enormous – and, in my view, justifiable – satisfaction with the 2007 crop of Drouhin whites, admitting that their sense of concentration might strike some observers as paradoxical given the vintage’s relatively high yields. Regular batonnage seems to have been a successful policy here, at least as judged by flattering textures and overt richness (almost atypically so for the vintage) short-term. For an account of Drouhin’s Chablis from 2007, consult the separate report on that region in this issue.Importer: Dreyfus-Ashby & Co., New York, NY; tel. (212) 818 0770