2013 Domaine Cecile Tremblay, Vosne-Romanee, Vieilles Vignes 1x750ml

Vinous 89-92

Good full red. A raspberry aroma is complicated by wild notes of game and smoky lees. At once dense and juicy, showing excellent creamy depth for village wine. Really spreads out on the back end to saturate the entire palate. Finishes with substantial dusty tannins and serious structure. This wine is always large-scaled and reduced in the early going, notes Tremblay, and is generally the last to be bottled. Should make a superb village wine. [Stephen Tanzer, 01/01/2015]

Anticipated maturity: 2020-2028

Robert Parker 89-91

Cecile explained how this cru can be reductive and therefore undergoes a relatively longer elevage. The nose on the 2013 Vosne-Romanee Village is tightly wound at the moment with a slight tinny note accompanying the black fruit. The palate is medium-bodied, silky in the mouth with commendable depth and it shows great purity on the finish for a village cru. This is worth seeking out. Cecile Tremblay: new hairdo, new baby (six months – cute) and a new vintage. Together with her gargantuan hound slumped by the window, Cecile showed me her small portfolio of highly sought-after wines from carafe apart from one that she served from an Aladdin-like Perspex teapot. I enquired whether I could give it a rub to see if La Tache poured out. I wondered how Cecile had coped in such a sodden season given that she adheres to organic principles in her vineyard. There are no genies in Burgundy, not unless you count Rudoph Steiner. "It was very complicated. There were many jobs to keep the sanitary condition in the vines," she lamented. "I had to use 5.8 kg of copper sulphate when the maximum is 6.0 kg per hectare. Compare that to 2014 when I only had to use 1.7 kg. I had to do 11 treatments in the vineyard during 2013 to fight against mildew and oidium. You had to be so precise. Skins were fragile because on the constant inflating and deflating of berries whenever it rained. I would have liked to have started the harvest on 5 October, but instead we started on 2 October because of the forecast, stopping on 4 or 5 October and finishing around 10 October." It is interesting to note the crucial picking date decision, because on my next visit Christophe Roumier remarked that in hindsight, he wished he had done exactly what Cecile opted to do in 2013 i.e. unsheathed the secateurs earlier. [Neal Martin, 01/12/2014]

Anticipated maturity: 2016-2023