The 2016 Vosne-Romanée Village has a complex bouquet with brambly red fruit, smoke and a slight peatiness that develops with time. The palate is sappy on the entry with fine but firm tannin. There is impressive fruit concentration here with a grippy and quite masculine finish. Give this a couple of years in bottle. Excellent.

Tighter-knit and more reticent than the 2017 rendition, the 2016 Vosne-Romanée Village exhibits notes of dark plummy fruit, blood orange, grilled game and spices. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, firm and chewy, with juicy acids and good depth and length. I suspect that this cuvée will gain immensely over the coming years as Charles Lachaux's vineyard work makes more and more of a difference.

(racked; 60% vendange entier ; the yield here was just 25 hectoliters per hectare): Good medium red. Deeper-pitched aromas of plum, spices and herbs complemented by smoky minerality. A step up in plumpness in the middle from the village wine from Nuits-Saint-Georges and Chambolle-Musigny but still with a salty savory quality. Finishes dry but not quite dusty, with a flinty note to go with its plum fruit. I'm not convinced that these village wines have enough depth of sweet fruit to support such a high percentage of whole-cluster vinification.

Some evolution evident on the nose; much more complexity than the other 2016 village wines from this address. Lots of juice and energy. A really very fine example. Lots of texture but the tannins are finer than the in the Chambolle. (JR)