A distinctly cooler nose features wet stone and equally high-toned but even more refined red pinot fruit aromas that are in perfect keeping with the detailed, pure and tension-filled middle weight and ultra-precise flavors that are quite serious, all wrapped in a racy and minerally finish that is crisp and offers a fine sense of relief and detail. This will definitely require patience, which is to say on the order of 15 to 20 years to be at its best. If you can find it, buy it. Drink 2028+.

– Burghound.com, Issue 42. Tasted: May 2011

Bright medium red. Complex, soil-driven nose combines redcurrant, flowers and minerals. Suave and weightless, with sneaky intensity to the brisk red fruit and minerals flavor lifted by a piquant note of orange peel. Finishes quite dry, juicy and classic, with substantial but very fine tannins and rising fruit. Winemaker Yves Confuron compares the marne blanche soil here to that of Gevrey's Clos Saint-Jacques. This wine was bottled barely two months before my November visit and had not yet shut down.

Bark, resin, and leather in the nose of the Courcel 2008 Pommard Rugiens put me in mind of a tannery, and smoky black tea and peat accentuate the wine's aromatic pungency. Ripe black raspberry and licorice inform an impressively viscous and gum-coating palate. To be sure, this is tannic, but not at all stiffly so: its structure is like a supple yet potentially life-saving suit of delicate chain mail rings, and I don't doubt the life of this wine in bottle will be saved for the next two decades. In 2007 and 2008, Yves Confuron steadfastly retained his allegiance to late harvest and long fermentation with whole clusters and stems, and was willing to sort and discard fruit ruthlessly to achieve fine results in both vintages. Confuron - voicing an opinion rare among red Burgundy growers - prefers his 2007s for what he considers their nearly ideal balance, and it's hard to fault that description, even if (like me) you're drawn more to the style of 2008s. He also thinks his 2007s will hold that balance for extended bottle aging, though I am skeptical on that count. it's certainly possible that the 2008s will seize up after bottling, but at the time when I tasted them, their refinement of texture gave the lie to the many critics of vendange entier - particularly in a marginally ripe and rot-challenged vintage - who insist that the inclusion of stems in the fermentor can only add undesirable tannin and bitterness. Malolactic conversion in Confuron's young 2008 vintage wines was spread all the way from April to November, but that didn't bother him, since elevage here typically lasts the better part of two full years, and he was planning to spread the bottling between June or early July and September. (The 2007s were not bottled until August and September, 2009.) Importer: Diageo Chateau and Estate Wines Company, New York, NY; tel. (212) 419-1400

Tasted at Flint Wine’s 2008 horizontal in London. This was very difficult to assess out of barrel. In bottle, it has light strawberry, orange peel and redcurrant on the nose. Moderate definition. The palate is a little hard on the entry with an herbaceous, slightly vegetal finish. Tasted February 2011. Importer: Diageo Chateau and Estate Wines Company, New York, NY; tel. (212) 419-1400