Based on the same principle as his village Volnay, Rossignol's 2006 Pommard brings together fruit from chalky Vignots in the (ca. 330 meter high) nose bleed sector with fruit from the abundant, clay-rich "low land" acreage that accrues to this appellation. The latter is too fat, opines Rossignol, and in a vintage like 2006, the Vignots too "tender" for its own good. If this is not quite as strikingly successful as the Volnay, that's probably due to the difficulties for later-ripening Pommard generally vis-a-vis Volnay this vintage, though perhaps in part also to the sheer extremity of contrast between the two sites. Scents of cedar and wood smoke mingle with suggestions of candied, crystallized black raspberry and dark cherry. Impressively sweet fruit concentration on the palate covers the tannins, but this finishes with a rather forbidding sense of them. I would pair the wine carefully at table over the coming 2-3 years and in the process ascertain whether it has the potential for longer-term appeal.
"Excellent ripeness came late, but then very quickly," reports Nicolas Rossignol, who began harvested his 2006s already in mid September. "Volnay tends to be precocious, anyway," he adds, "and you have to consider the intensive way in which I've been working the vines lately, with very low yields and intensive canopy management. I wanted to preserve freshness and equilibrium." Rossignol reported that his intention had been to bottle his 2006s correspondingly early to preserve their fruit and refinement, but the mid-winter of 2007-2008 was so bitterly cold that they seized-up, and in the end he permitted them what, for him, is a normal 18 months' elevage. Deeming his fruit - which largely weighed in between 12 and just over 13% potential alcohol - to be healthy, he employed whole clusters and stems selectively, depending on how he thought the technique fit the particular appellation. Once again, I was unable to taste more than half of the roughly two dozen Rossignol's wines - traversing five communes - and he declined to show me this year's Fremiets or Taillepieds on the grounds of their respective three- and two-barrel total production. (That said, Rossignol very generously introduced me by means of a sample to the wines of his neighbor Jean-Marc Boulet - see under that name for my notes.) For further details on Rossignol and his approach to Pinot, see my report in issue 171.
Importers: Martine's Wines. Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400; also a Becky Wasserman Selection, Le Serbet (various importers); fax 011-333-80-24-29-70
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