Ripe mulberry and blackberry are the dominate fruits in the Rossignol 2006 Volnay Clos Des Angles - just as they were in the corresponding Caillerets - but this wine from a clay-rich, early-ripening site just east of the village exhibits a quite different personality. Beef bouillon, game, and a decadent pungency of burning autumn foliage (perhaps accentuated by vendange entier) offer counterpoint to its sweetly ripe fruit, and it finishes with less austerity but also less striking minerality than the Caillerets. Here too is a wine whose evolution will be well worth watching for 6-8 years.
"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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