Tasted at the IMW 2008 tasting at Vintners Hall. The Beaux Monts has a light, well-defined bouquet with crushed strawberry, red cherries, white flowers and a touch of white peach, so feminine and precise. The palate is medium-bodied with firm, ripe tannins, structured with just a touch of pepper on the masculine, tobacco tinged finish. Very backward and surly, orange rind on the aftertaste…absorbing.

93+ Pungent iodine, Lapsang tea, peat, crushed stone, and brown spices mingle with fresh black fruits in the nose of Grivot’s 2008 Vosne Romanee Les Beaumonts, which in the mouth adds savory, umami-rich shrimp shell reduction and soy to its berry and mineral melange. Finely tannic and with undeniably austere elements to its strong mineral expression, this nonetheless draws saliva and invigorates with its saline, smoky, spicy, tartly juicy, palate-staining, vibrant persistence. Strikingly delicious and fascinatingly complex as this is, Grivot seeks to assure me that it isn’t showing all that it had prior to bottling, although I’m finding that hard to imagine in this instance! - David Schildknecht