The 2013 la Bousière was one of the shortest cuvées in the cellar in this vintage, as the domaine was very, very strict with selection (due to a fair bit of rot in this parcel) and the Harmands only have four casks out of a normal nine barrels in this vintage. The wine was raised in twenty-five percent new wood and offers up an absolutely superb bouquet of cassis, black cherries, espresso, grilled meats, woodsmoke, dark soil tones and vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and quite tangy in personality, with an excellent core of fruit, fine mineral drive on the backend, ripe tannins and a long, classy and nascently complex finish. Fine juice.

This elegant effort is pretty and cool though it displays plenty of sauvage character on the red berry fruit and earth-scented nose that is trimmed in discreet wood nuances. There is excellent vibrancy, detail and minerality to the middle weight flavors that possess plenty of salinity on the focused, linear and firmly structured finish. This is perhaps a bit less refined than it usually is with bright but not drying acidity.