La Grande Rue, Grand Cru, Lamarche

Note:

Tasted blind at the Burgundy 2011 horizontal tasting in Beaune. The La Grande Rue Grand Cru has one of the most precocious bouquets of the 2011 grand cru tasted blind. It offers a surfeit of kirsch, redcurrant jam, raspberry preserve and candied orange peel all struck through with tangible minerality and tension. The palate is sweet and pure with ebullient red brambly fruit under a veneer of new wood, but the two are effortlessly in sync. It gently builds toward an ostentatious and almost ravishing finish only confined by the limitations of the growing season. This is a hedonistic and luxuriant delight – all while upholding the essence of the vineyard.