Labruyere’s 2009 Moulin-a-Vent – corresponding to the blend they referred to, but then did not label as “grande cuvee” in vintage 2008; bottled in December, 2010; and weighing in just shy of 14% alcohol – mingles concentrated aromas and flavors of lightly-cooked blackberry and cassis with those of bacon and beef marrow. This has maintained an admirable sense of juiciness for its vintage, although there is a bit of tannic chew, which along with toasty notes from barrel detracts a tad from the finishing display of this bottling’s virtues. Given the absence of track record as well as a slight rusticity of tannin, I would monitor this carefully if I planned to hold any for longer than three years.
Proprietor Edouard Labruyere and oenologist Nadine Gublin – for details about whose collaborative revival of the Labruyere family estate and its choice holdings, consult my issue 190 report – have given their 2009s the extended elevage they promised will be routine here, the Grande Cuvee having been bottled in December of last year and the Clos only this April. Possibly this long elevage – along with adept blending – is what has tamed the impressions engendered by their 2009s’ high alcohol when they were tasted from cask in June 2010. Long stays in barrel chez Domaine Labruyere are to be sure in part conditioned by nature, and when I visited this June – just as had been the case the year before – many of the young wines were still in malo, making it impossible to offer detailed notes on how the eventual 2010s will taste. Suffice it to say based on the lots I sampled, that there is greater vivacity and salinity as well as levity than was found in the 2008s or 2009s, albeit without the richness of 2009. (Overall, the 2010s weighed-in at under 13% alcohol – with one lot having even been lightly chaptalized.) It will be very interesting to see how this relatively low pH material takes to its sojourn in barrel (fewer than 10% of which will have been new). “I’m very content with these 2010s,” remarks Gublin, who began picking them on September 17, “indeed it was a lovely surprise how things turned out.” Issuing in large part from the Champs de Cour and La Roche lieux-dits very near the famed windmill.
(WA 31st Aug 2011)
