From an obscure Boillot monopole within Fremiets, the 2008 Volnay Clos de la Rougeotte smells alluringly of ripe cherry, black raspberry, blond tobacco, ginger, nutmeg, and hints of meat stock. This displays cut, brightness, sappy palate fruit presence and tactile impingement of spices, all of which combine with salt, chalk, and peat for a pungent and invigorating finish. Ample tannins here are fine-grained, and I suspect this will be worth following for at least a decade.
In 2008, Henri Boillot both expanded his domaine and became ambitious qua negociant with Pinot. In the latter capacity, he looks for contracts where he can exercise control over the farming, so that, for example, all of the 2008s – he reports – were cropped at less than 20 hectoliters per hectare and picked very late. Unorthodoxly (for Burgundy, at least) Boillot pressed many of his reds early to let them complete fermentation in barrel. His malos were late but not dramatically so, finishing in August, and most of the wines were bottled in February, a few earlier. (I tasted several 2007 reds from Boillot, but too early-on to adequately assess, and I have not had time to revisit that collection.)
Various importers