Deep black cherry, charred meatiness, rose and licorice give away the identity of Jadot’s 2005 Chambertin Clos de Beze. Firm tannins and mouth-filling but bitter black cherry fruit, along with black licorice, wet stones, smoky black tea and Latakia tobacco feature on the palate, and there is a savage grip in the the finish. This lacks the refinement and elegance of many of the best 2005s from this great site, but bids fair to make up for this in sheer intensity and mysteriously complex depth. Here is a potentially ageless wine that doesn’t merely typify the dark side of 2005, but is a veritable Darth Vader of the vintage.
Jacques Lardiere has once again presided over a collection for the most part not intended to flatter in its youth, but rather to achieve an eventual balance of fruit acidity with (in this instance frequently quite prominent) tannin. Prolonged post-fermentative extraction promoted a formidably-structured group of wines, which Lardiere expressed no hurry about bottling. Certain of these – particularly from the Cote de Beaune – displayed a slightly drying finishing astringency or simply an austere lack of charm to match their concentration, traits Lardiere suggested might be traceable to drought stress in those sites. A brief July rain that reached the Cote de Nuits but not the Cote de Beaune was critical, he asserts, and all of Jadot’s vines in the northern Cote were picked before the harvest in the south commenced. (Wines from the Domaine Louis Jadot, Domaine Heritiers Louis Jadot, or Domaine Gagey, have been identified with a letter “D” in their listings.) (David Schildknecht, The Wine advocate, 29th Jun 2007, 93-95 Pts)
