Wine Advisor
Georges Roumier, Bonnes Mares Grand Cru 2008
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
The 2008 Bonnes Mares is a huge, intense wine endowed with tons of fruit, but wrapped around a powerful, focused frame. The tannins are big, but also beautifully integrated. This towering Burgundy will require an extraordinary amount of patience before revealing its true pedigree, but it is clearly magnificent. Anticipated maturity: 2023-2048. My visit with Christophe Roumier was one of the highlights of the two weeks I spent in Burgundy earlier in the year. The range of 2009s is simply extraordinary, and the 2008s aren’t too far behind. Most of the 2009s were in tank, awaiting imminent bottling. Roumier began harvesting on September 12. Importer: Diageo Chateau & Estate Wines, Napa CA; tel. (707) 299-2600
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
Tasted at the IMW 2008 tasting at Vintners Hall. There is a wonderful perfume on the nose with scents of fresh strawberry, Morello, warm brick and just a hint of exotic fruit. Superb delineation and lift. The palate is medium-bodied with fine, quite tensile tannins on the entry, a very compact Bonnes-Mares, poised and lean at first but broadening out superbly towards the finely tuned finish that lingers long in the mouth. Beautiful. Tasted March 2011.
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
Tasted out of barrel at the Domaine. This Bonnes-Mares has a vibrant, floral, exuberant bouquet with dark cherries, plum, violets and rose petals, more Vosne in style. The palate has a beautiful texture, fine silky tannins, very harmonious with a plush, sensuous finish that makes this a quintessential Bonnes-Mares. It does not have the length or depth of a truly great vintage, but it remains an enticing proposition. Drink now-2030+ Tasted November 2009.
Reviewed by: David Schildknecht
Red raspberry and rhubarb allied to herbal elixir, brown spices, as well as citrus zest, curry, and white pepper pungency make for a head-turning nose and tongue-tingling, tonsil-shaking palate performance and finish from Roumier's 2008 Bonnes Mares. Here is one of those 2008s of striking cut and clarity; so vibrant it seems to be electrically charged. Indeed, its sheer audacity may not appeal to every pinotphile. Roasted meat juices and chalky as well as saline minerality add complexity. The abundant though fine tannins and pungent as well as bitter elements might take this in a more austere direction after bottling - "I think it could have benefited from 10% less new wood," Roumier remarks - but I am confident of a rebound and would anticipate a memorable experience from bottles at roughly 8-18 years of age. Christophe Roumier says his 2008 fruit demanded rigorous sorting to remove under-ripe bunches (whereas in 2007 this was necessary to remove rot), but he liked what was left enough to indulge in a significant proportion (most frequently 50%) of stems and whole clusters for the fermentations. "With such tiny, perfect berries, it was almost a shame to de-stem any of them," he remarks. Late to go through malo, like so many others of that year, these 2008s certainly preserve the vintage's primary virtues of vivacity and interactive complexity. Not more than 50% new wood was employed, to guard against loss of the vintage's vividly bright fruit in a vintage Roumier felt was unusually sensitive in that regard. Some of the 2008s remind him of 1980 or, more precisely, of what the 1980s could have become given today's standards of viticulture and selection. Roumier has a higher opinion of 2007 and their age-worthiness than do I, considering them superior to 2006 or 2008 - and given the way the two that I tasted from bottle showed, that opinion is not inexplicable. (I tasted the other Roumier 2007s too early in their evolution to render proper verdicts, although they were certainly effusively generous if not yet complex even pre-malo.) Roumier employed comparable percentages of stems and whole clusters, and indulged in more frequent pigeage than in 2008, comparing his resulting 2007s with 1985s. Importer: Diageo Chateau and Estate Wines Company, New York, NY; tel. (212) 419-1400
About the Producer
The domaine was founded in 1924 by Georges Roumier, who began domaine bottling in 1945. He was succeeded in 1957 by his son Jean-Marie and now grandson Christophe, who joined his father in 1982 and took over completely in 1992. Most of the wines are rented (en fermage) from family members although Ruchottes Chambertin is held on a share cropping deal with an external proprietor, Michel Bonnefond. The wines are seductively fruity in their youth yet with excellent ageing potential. The grapes are sorted in the vineyard, with a table de tri at the winery since 2003. They are mostly destemmed, albeit depending on vineyard and vintage, with a few more stems being used recently – then placed in wooden fermenters. The juice is given a cool soak at 15° then allowed to start naturally. The juice is punched down twice a day and temperature controlled so as not to exceed 32°C. There is no great reliance on new wood in the maturation cellar, with 15-25% being used for village wines, 25-40% for premiers crus and no more than 50% for Bonnes Mares. In recent years Christophe has been searching for, and achieving, a greater sense of precision in his wines.
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Package Size
1 x 75cl
