The 2010 Morey St. Denis Tres Girard emerges from the glass with a refined, textured melange of dark red and blue fruit, flowers, licorice and spices. The Tres Girard impresses for its finely knit, articulate fruit and supple personality. It is a gracious wine to drink over the next handful of years. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2018. Cecile Tremblay started harvesting on September 21. Like all of her colleagues, Tremblay suffered losses of 30-40% of her crop because of the weather conditions in 2010. Tremblay used 30% stems of the Echezeaux, but destemmed the fruit for all of her other wines as she didn’t feel the stems were fully ripe. As always, the approach to winemaking is pretty stripped down to the bare essentials. The wines age on their lees with no rackings until they are prepared for bottling. Lastly, nearly everything you read about Cecile Tremblay makes mention that she is the grand-niece of Henri Jayer. While that fact is interesting from a historical perspective and explains the source of her holdings, it doesn’t make her wines good or bad. Frankly, these wines don’t need to stand on anyone else’s reputation. They are exceptional in their own right. I also tasted the 2010 Vosne-Romanee Les Rouges du Dessus, a highly promising wine that was still finishing its malolactic fermentation in November 2011 and was therefore hard to read. Importer: Peter Weygandt, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800

(two new Allier barrels): Bright, deep red. Exotic spices dominate the nose. Lush, broad and very ripe, with savory soil tones and chocolate dominating the palate. Finishes with substantial tannins. I find a bit less energy here than the Chambolle is showing today. Seems about ready to assemble.