Bright, saturated ruby-red. High-pitched nose dominated by violet and minerals. Thick on entry, then superconcentrated but light on its feet in the middle palate, with utterly fresh, sharply delineated flavors of cherry, minerals and spice cake. The huge, broad, fine tannins coat the entire palate. Explosive finishing flavors of sappy blackberry and black raspberry offer uncanny vinosity for the year. Obviously enormous and atypical for Les Saint-Georges, but here's a 2003 that could well enjoy a 25-year evolution in bottle.

The 2003 Nuits-St.-Georges Les St.-Georges, from this commune’s most heralded vineyard, sports a mouth-watering nose of cassis liqueur, blackberries, and black cherries. Medium to full-bodied, it is the firmest of Gouges’s 2003s, exhibiting worrisome levels of hard tannin. That being said, this wine also boasts unreal quantities of mouth-coating black fruits that assault the taster in unrelenting waves. If the rustic dryness of the tannin is overcome, in time, by the density of this effort’s fruit, this may be a 30-40 year wine of epic proportions. If not... Projected maturity: 2015-2030? Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802