Bright, dark red; less saturated than the Taillepieds. Ripe aromas of black cherry, spices, minerals and chocolate, lifted by violet and white flowers. Dense, silky and seamless wine with mouthfilling dark berry and chocolate flavors framed by harmonious acidity. Not liqueur-like or at all roasted in spite of the site's rocky, poor soil and the very dry summer. In fact, Weber considers this to be one of the best wines of the 2015 vintage for Bouchard. Finishes very long, with refined tannins spreading out horizontally to saturate the palate. A wine of noteworthy finesse, this beauty fills the mouth without coming across as weighty.

The 2015 Volnay 1er Cru Les Caillerets "Ancienne Cuvée Carnot" offers up a reserved bouquet of cherry, currant leaf, grilled squab and cedary new oak. On the palate, the wine is fine-grained, medium-bodied and tight at the core, with a greater sense of completeness, cohesion and depth than Bouchard's other domaine reds in the 2015 vintage. It's still lacking the concentration and depth to score higher, but the raw materials here were clearly promising. If it's merely closed, then my score will seem conservative.

Simple fruit on the nose, but the palate offers more floral character and quite substantial concentration. Lovely tannic grain too – soft and approachable, but with enough tension to age well. (RH)