I like this much better now than I did when it first came out about a year ago. Back then it seemed gloppy to me. Now it's starting to show more focus. It has a nice sunny brightness, and a pretty note of herbal greenery on the back end. But it's heavier on the fruit than the minerality. You get a little whiff of metal shavings in the aroma and it takes awhile before any of that migrates to the palate. It's probably best to leave this one cellared awhile.

Now we're talking. The acidic spine to this presents an immediate and forceful contrast to the 2002, which wasn't nearly so tensile; this is like a high-tension steel cable of a Champagne. The fruit is still bright and youthful and doesn't taste any more evolved than the '02, either, but it has developed the powerful mineral presence and craggy texture that was only hinted at in the '02. Formidable! But tasty too.

Superb Corton-Charlemagne. Gorgeous aroma, so deep and wild it might more accurately be called a stench. The fruit's taken on a golden complexion without getting at all tired. But it was with the food that this really became a stunner. A sip after a bite of scallop leads to an incredibly vivid briny oceanic finish *exactly* like you'd just swallowed a raw oyster. The illusion is really amazing, like a molecular gastronomy sleight of hand, and so unmistakable that everyone at the table picked up on it even though it wasn't to everyone's liking. This wasn't a flavor in the wine; it wasn't a flavor in the food; it was only conjured up by the two of them together. I'm not ordinarily a big believer in wine-food pairing voodoo; most of the time it's just two nice tastes that don't clash. This was the exception, that kind of 1+1=100 synergy that you can go for years without experiencing anything like it again.

Stony scents, like sniffing a rock quarry. This comes across incredibly structured and at first the material feels a little sparse relative to its bones. But it fleshes out a lot as it sits in the glass, with the fruit sweetening up and picking up this deep black-fruited character. In the end it's all black fruit and gravel. But it never acquired quite the elegance of the Chambertin.

Interesting aromatic contrast to the Bèze -- stony vs. savory. (This one was the savory.) A very different expression. This also has a very different presence; it's fleshier, fuller in the mouth but also more elegant and refined; it has this softness and elegance that almost feels like a cloud billowing in the mouth instead of a liquid, and yet it has all these stony accents to it at the same time whcih are a total contrast to its sense of airiness and buoyancy. Like a cloud made of stone. The edge in this flight goes to the Chambertin.

Someone forgot to tell Rousseau this was supposed to be a bad year. If anything the fruit here is even richer than the '89; it's really impressive how much sweet flesh is still here. But it doesn't have the earthiness or minerality of some of the others. I like how the aromas become almost tart after a little while, which gives this some nice energy.

So rich and primary. At first the aroma is so rich it's like a creme de cassis reduction, with a structure that's just as powerful. But there is a ton of fruit material here and the structure is quickly saturated. It's a blend of red and black fruits and it feels almost luscious in its intensity, picking up an anise/licorice thing after sitting in the glass awhile that in other contexts might make it seem a little candied but in this case the structure keeps it serious. I held this in the glass til the end to see how it would develop but it remained one of the richest wines on the table and surely has decades ahead of it.

Sweet fruit aromatics but in this case the structure is even more powerful and seems to stretch the fruit material a little further than it's comfortable going. This has the same enticing red-and-black-fruited melange of a number of the other wines but again I have to give the edge to the Chambertin in this flight because it offered more intrigue in the non-fruit department.

Enticing aromatics, like sweet graham crackers. But just when you think this might be a more easy-going, open-knit bottle, the subtle twist of minerally stone on the back end keeps metastasizing and turns the wine into another serious mouthful of stone.

This is the first wine in the whole lineup to show any woodiness in the aroma whatsoever, but the effect was still sweet and enticing. There's no doubting from the texture that this wine is something grandiose - it just has that caressing mouthfeel, and the red and black fruits get more and more stony accents as it sits in the glass. Tough to choose a favorite between this and the Chambertin this time; this one was definitely the more refined of the two from a textural perspective but the Chambertin had more things going on.

Closed on the nose at first but develops that gravelly rock quarry scent with time in the glass and is a veritable mouthful of crushed stone on the palate. Blackberries and cranberries and flowers and something intensely metallic, like it's laced with iron, and all that mineral stuff was actually more powerful than the fruit. In concentration it might be more mild than the Bèze but I'm not sure it was as refined. Tough to choose a favorite. Glad we had them both.

No doubt about it, my favorite wine on the table. The tannin's either gone or hiding behind all the rich fruit which is still sweet and luscious; either way, this is totally ready to go. The fruit has this intense sticky grip on the palate like molten tar but it's also impressive for its scale and dimension; in retrospect there is almost something Monfortino-like about this. Sweet and meaty and a beautiful melange of primary purity with the savory meatiness of something more aged.