The 2005 Nuits-St.-Georges Les Roncieres offers a fascinating Cabernet Franc-like hint of machine oil along with ripe red cherry, tobacco, cedar, and wood smoke in the nose. Clean, sweet, bright fruit makes for an intense and refreshing palate impression and the finish introduces carnal notes, faint bitterness of herbal concentrate, persistent ripe red fruit with invigorating tart fruit skin notes, and a hint of new wood that Chevillon says is there because this wine was so late to go through malo and to be racked out of its initial one-third new wood and into older barrels. If further proof were needed that the Chevillons are in a class by themselves among the major Nuits-St.-Georges landholders, they certainly delivered it this year. Like so many other vintners, they reported backing off on pigeage this year – and heaven knows, the resultant wines don’t lack for concentration. Their Bourgogne Passetoutgrain, Bourgogne, and Nuits-St.-Georges Les Perrieres had all just been sulfured and filtered, so Bertrand Chevillon declined to show them. He was as yet noncommittal, however, about when the other wines would be bottled, although this would probably continue through Spring, and be accompanied by the estate’s usual light filtration. Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 524-1524.

Bright red-ruby. Cherry, redcurrant, leather and tobacco; offers a noble Nuits-Saint-Georges rusticity. Broad and sweet, with good minerality but a lower pitch than the Perrieres. A bit less open today owing to the later end to the malolactic fermentation. Finishes with substantial chewy tannins and hints of tobacco and leather.