"Allen Meadows' Burghound; tasted January 1, 2005"
An explosive nose of spice, clove, ginger, anise and tea nuances that serve to highlight elegant and refined ripe and black pinot fruit notes that are followed by classy, pure and powerfully deep and concentrated medium full flavors that retain immaculate balance and I particularly like the transparency here. This has huge length and there is upside potential here as there is so much extract that this may age even better than I imagine.91-93 points
Wine maker notes
Producer note: Alain Hudelot told me that his extremely talented cellar master Pierre Nawrocki had departed just after the 2004 harvest. My sources tell me that he has landed at Domaine Frédéric Esmonin. I view him as the primary driver of the impressive quality improvement at Hudelot since his arrival in 1996 so it will be interesting to see what Alain Hudelot does next. This is not to say that Alain Hudelot's wines weren't good because they were; rather, it's simply that Nawrocki's were great. Hudelot told me that 2003 "was a difficult vintage. We vinified quickly because we were afraid of creating another 1976. We also did less punching down and used a shorter cuvaison though we neither chaptalized nor acidulated. Yields were down by about one-third though we did have great sugars at around 13.5% on average." (Atherton Wine Imports, Atherton, CA, Scott Levy Selections, Atlanta, GA and Bayfield Importing, Brooklyn, NY; Howard Ripley, John Armit and Laytons, UK).
