The 2016 Chambertin-Clos de Bèze Grand Cru is showing brilliantly from bottle, unwinding with aeration to reveal a deep and brooding bouquet of plums, cassis and cherries mingled with notions of grilled meats, ceps, peonies and iodine. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, textural and enveloping, with a muscular chassis of ripe tannin that's cloaked in a core of vibrant and concentrated fruit, concluding with a long and thrillingly carnal finish. It will be fascinating to compare this with the qualitatively similar but stylistically very different 2015 vintage when both wines have 20 years on the clock.

The 2016 Chambertin Clos-de-Bèze Grand Cru is a little subdued on the nose with delineated red cherry, crushed strawberry and crushed stone aromas. The palate is medium-bodied with crisp tannin, fresh and mineral-driven, almost Ruchottes-like in style with just a small attenuation towards the finish. Very fine, if not quite delivering the substance you might have expected. Tasted blind at the 2016 Burgfest tasting.

(the yield here was normal in 2016): Healthy dark color. Fully ripe and downright sexy on the nose, offering scents of black raspberry, dark cherry, mocha, minerals and smoked meat. Boasts terrific sweetness and density, with its dark fruit and mineral flavors complicated by a note of oaky torrefaction and nicely framed by harmonious acidity. The long, rising, ripely tannic finish features chewy tannins that hit the palate later than those of the Chambertin, allowing the sweet fruit to build. Incidentally, I tasted a normal sample as well as a barrel that received an " étuvage " treatment, which involves injecting steam in an attempt to tone down the early exotic wood element that the estate's Clos de Bèze typically shows in the early going. The latter barrel showed more immediate harmony but the normal barrel, while a bit tougher and more tannic on first pour, immediately gained in sweetness in the glass.