The 2012 Gevrey-Chambertin Aux Combottes is endowed with marvelous focus and intensity. Graphite, violets, menthol and blue/blackish fruit are all alive in a vibrant, chiseled Burgundy marked by cool, insistent minerality and tons of pure nuance. As gorgeous as the 2012 is today, the Combottes possesses much less early appeal than many of other Dujac 2012. Readers will have to be patient here. For those who can wait, the Combottes has all the requisites to develop into a superb bottle.

(vinified with 80% whole clusters): Good deep red. Musky, complex aromas of dark raspberry, smoke and minerals. Silky but tightly wound, with tangy red fruit flavors complicated by an iron quality. Very fine-grained wine with a firm, persistent finish.

The 2012 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Combottes comes from 1.15-hectares of vineyard, with an average age of 30 years. It has a very precise bouquet that is wonderfully focused: subtle notes of red berry fruit with lifted mineralite. The palate is medium-bodied with fine definition, supple tannins: taut and focused with a linear but very fresh finish. This will probably need four or five years bottle age, but it has great potential. Tasting in the cellars of Domaine Dujac in Morey Saint Denis is always an educational, enlightening experience, granting you a useful picture of how some of the top vineyards performed in the Cote de Nuits during a given year. Alec Seysses was on hand to guide me around his particularly cold cellar, one of those occasions when my warm hands might be bad for pastry, but ideal for warming glasses. “It was the fourth poor year in a row in terms of quantity,” he explained, showing me the concrete eggs now employed at the domaine, a less common sight here in Burgundy compared to Bordeaux. “although in 2012 we had a regular crop of the village crus and the younger vines did well. We averaged around 20 hectoliters per hectare. Everything was racked in early September but there is some reduction from the cold cellar. The softness of the tannins strikes me as a character of the vintage. It is more a dark fruit vintage than a red fruit vintage. Sugars were between 12.5 and 13%, with a few 13.3% here and there. I find the wines similar to 2010, but the 2012 is a little more charming because the tannins are not quite as strong.” Tasting through the complete range of wines from the small batch of negociant wines under “Dujac Fils et Pere” to the clutch of grand crus, it was clear that propitious terroirs that influenced the wines greatly. The village crus were mostly commendable in their own right, but the real excitement begins as you broach the premier crus, where the barrel samples achieve high degrees of complexity and nuance. Like many of the top growers, I was pleased to see individual terroirs articulated with great clarity in 2012, perhaps more so than the 2011s. These barrel samples seemed to contain so much energy: tightly coiled springs of fermented grape juice, brimming with tension and freshness that Jeremy and Alec will endeavor to capture once in bottle. I have little doubt that they will succeed. Importers: The Sorting Table, Napa, CA; tel. (415) 491-4724; Martin Scott Wines, Little Neck, NY; tel. (516) 327-0808; Chambers & Chambers, San Francisco, CA; tel. (415) 642-5500 and though several merchants in the UK including Berry Brother & Rudd.

This is extremely fine and pure with a knockout mouth feel to the restrained, pure and lacy medium-bodied flavors that are also shaped by fine-grained tannins on the mouth coating, understated and lingering finish. This is not a big wine but as classic examples typically are, this is a Gevrey 1er of finesse and refinement plus it's impeccably well-balanced.