Domaine Taupenot-Merme Morey-Saint-Denis, Cote de Nuits, France

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Taupenot-Merme’s 2008 Morey-St.-Denis – largely from the Les Porroux below Clos de la Bussieres – evinces game; tart purple plum and dark cherry; smoky black tea; and high-toned, medicinal herbal extracts. With firm but in the context of the present collection relatively fine tannins, this finishes with sap and invigoration of a certain austerity thanks to the combination of tartness and bitter herbal notes. I suspect it will tone down in a few years and make for satisfaction until at least age 6. From quite numerous and disparate parcels, the corresponding Gevrey-Chambertin was a bit more high-toned and strident. Romain Taupenot is clearly taking important steps to build on his family’s experience and do justice to their extensive list of appellations in parcels spread out along the Cote d’Or (and in both Pinot and Chardonnay). My tastings of wines from the last three vintages turned up some fine and above all highly distinctive bottlings which, if I were to guess, will probably please some pinotphiles more than my scores might suggest, and please the rest less! Taupenot – who prefers closed fermentors in order, he claims, to prevent influence of the yeasts in one batch on this in another – opined that his raw material in 2008 permitted sparing punch-downs in the early stage of fermentation, whereas he did not trust his 2007 fruit to respond well to as aggressive a regimen of extraction. “You had to be careful not to do too-short maceration in 2008” though, he maintains, “because whereas usually the extraction of tannin in the presence of alcohol is steady, in 2008 the tannin was not extracted until very late.” The 2008s here had been bottled a month before my February visit, all with light filtration, because, Taupenot says, “the levels of turbidity I measured were too high for me to omit filtration, whereas in 2007 I bottled some of the wines without filtration.” This estate is perhaps best known for their few rows of Clos de Lambrays, on account of which that site misses being a monopole of the Domaine des Lambrays; but as I did not have time to taste the entire Taupenot-Merme range, I did not insist on sampling the less-than-barrique-sized quantity of that particular cru. Imported by Scott Paul Wines, Carlton, OR; tel. (503) 852 7300; also and a Scott Levy Selection, Norcross, GA; tel. (770) 730-0361