Medium red-ruby. Sexy, distinctly wild aromas of raspberry, minerals, coffee and smoke. Wonderfully ripe and dense but classically dry; thicker and more powerful than the Suchots but not showing that wine's finesse today. The finish is broad and palate-staining, revealing more iron-like minerality than primary fruit. This is less sexy today than the Suchots and much more closed. Even in 2005, Lachaux chaptalized this wine about a half-degree (it's 13.5% in bottle) to prolong the fermentation.

The 2005 Romanee St.-Vivant offers very ripe but fresh black raspberry, black cherry, ginger, white pepper and game on the nose, exhibits considerably greater depth of fruit and meatiness, refinement of tannins as well as creamy richness than the other 2005 Arnoux offerings, and finishes with deep richness and flavor diversity but great poise and no sense of heaviness. Also recommended: 2005 Bourgogne (85). Pascal Lachaux (the late Robert Arnoux’s son-in-law, who has been in charge here now for nearly two decades) had just bottled his 2005 collection – vinified in his superb, recently-completed, gravity-fed facilities – when I visited. Lachaux compares the proper watchword of the winemaker in a vintage with Pinot as healthy and naturally-concentrated as in 2005, to that of a chef confronted with a perfect piece of fish: restraint. That also describes the results he has achieved in bottle, although allowance should be made for the possibility that the expression of certain wines was restrained by their recent bottling. mporter: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990.