The 2015 Cuvée Laurène from Véronique Drouhin and the talented team at DDO is outstanding, offering up a better structural chassis for aging than the estate bottling. Readers will recall that the Cuvée Laurène is a barrel selection made in the cellars, with casks that seem particularly well built for long-term aging comprising this bottling. The 2015 version offers up a beautifully precise and nascently complex bouquet of black cherries, plums, raw cocoa, dark soil tones, woodsmoke, a touch of fresh thyme and a lovely framing of cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, pure and full-bodied, with excellent soil signature, a fine core of fruit, ripe, fine-grained tannins and a very long, youthfully complex and promising finish. Whereas the 2015 estate bottling of pinot is approachable out of the blocks (though still destined for better things with bottle age), the 2015 Cuvée Laurène needs to be allowed a cool corner of the cellar for hibernation over the next decade before it is broached. To open bottles before then is simply to waste the outstanding potential of this excellent wine!

Pale to medium ruby-purple in color, the 2015 Pinot Noir Laurene is intensely scented of cranberries, wild strawberries and raspberry leaves with nuances of underbrush, wild thyme and yeast extract. Medium-bodied, fine, fresh and tightly wound at this youthful stage, it delivers plenty of depth and expression and the long finish is beautifully framed with a commendable texture.- LPB

Thick with ripe black fruits that are streaked with cola, this substantial vintage of the winery's middle-tier bottling also brings notes of toasted hazelnuts. The overall balance is spot-on, with ample acidity lending a suggestion of wet stone as the flavors resolve into the finish. Delicious already but quite ageworthy for a decade at least.