Jadot’s 2005 Clos de la Roche offers scents of red raspberry, cherry, resin and maple syrup. Bright and sappy, sweetly-fruited and spicy on the palate, it finishes with smoky, resinous and faintly-bitter medicinal notes mingling with persistently sweet, ripe fruit. While quite accessible today, this carries a considerable load of tannin beneath its folds of fruit, should have at least ten year potential, and may well enter a tough period after bottling. Jacques Lardiere has once again presided over a collection for the most part not intended to flatter in its youth, but rather to achieve an eventual balance of fruit acidity with (in this instance frequently quite prominent) tannin. Prolonged post-fermentative extraction promoted a formidably-structured group of wines, which Lardiere expressed no hurry about bottling. Certain of these – particularly from the Cote de Beaune – displayed a slightly drying finishing astringency or simply an austere lack of charm to match their concentration, traits Lardiere suggested might be traceable to drought stress in those sites. A brief July rain that reached the Cote de Nuits but not the Cote de Beaune was critical, he asserts, and all of Jadot’s vines in the northern Cote were picked before the harvest in the south commenced. (Wines from the Domaine Louis Jadot, Domaine Heritiers Louis Jadot, or Domaine Gagey, have been identified with a letter “D” in their listings.) Also recommended: 2005 Cote de Nuits-Villages Le Vaucrain ($25.00;86+?), 2005 Santenay Clos de Malte ($27.00; 85-87), 2005 Savigny-les-Beaune Aux Guettes (84-86+?), 2005 Nuits-St.-Georges ($37.00; 85-87+?), 2005 Chambolle-Musigny ($50.00; 85-87+?). Importer: Kobrand, Inc., New York, NY; tel.(212) 490 9300

Good medium ruby. Very ripe aromas of medicinal dark cherry, tar, mocha and dried herbs; very Clos de la Roche! Sweet and concentrated but a bit youthfully inexpressive today, with the medicinal cherry character dominating the palate. With moderate mid-palate flesh, the tannins currently show a somewhat gritty quality.