a fine wine tasting archive
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Plénitude is Dom Pérignon's theory that Champagne peaks more than once. The same 2008, held fifteen more years on the lees and disgorged in 2024 — the cool vintage's blade of acidity intact, only the edges quietly smoothed.
2008 was the vintage rescued by a north wind — high in acid, divisive, a year to judge by producer rather than by number. In Pacalet's whole-bunch, low-extraction hands, that acid becomes the spine.
Next of Kyn is the wine Manfred Krankl makes from the vines outside his own door — a single vineyard in Oak View, one label that never changes, and a number on the neck instead of a name. No. 2 was the 2008.
Sine Qua Non's 2008 Syrah carried a portrait of a red-haired woman with her eyes closed and the terse name B 20. Among the house's reds it is one of the more inward wines — cooler, more mineral, less inclined to shout — which at thirteen years turned out to be the point.
The Côte des Bar sits nearer to Chablis than to Reims, on the same Kimmeridgian marl. Devaux built its house there and gave the 2008 more than seven years on lees before letting it go.
Domaine Leroy's parcel of Clos de la Roche is two-thirds of a hectare — a few barrels a year of the rarest expression of Morey's greatest vineyard. The 2008, at thirteen years, was iron and dark fruit wound around Leroy's impossible concentration.
2008 was a summer that frightened Burgundy — grey, damp, and late. Then a dry north wind arrived in September and rewrote the vintage. At twelve years, La Tâche was still a young wine, and the year's nervous energy was exactly the point.