2018 Domaine Arnoux-Lachaux Vosne Romanée

At a modest 13.2%, the 2018 Vosne-Romanée Village is actually Lachaux's ripest wine this year, and it is showing brilliantly, unfurling with aromas of sweet wild berries, plums, orange rind, rose petals, woodsmoke and forest floor. Medium to full-bodied, satiny and concentrated, it's deep and lively, with juicy acids and powdery structuring tannins. As I wrote last year, the thoughtful, intelligent and increasingly self-assured Charles Lachaux seems to gain in authority each time I taste with him, and my most recent visit prompted the same reflection. As readers will know by now, in the cuverie, wines that were once heavily extracted and lavishly oaked are now gently macerated, with significant percentages of whole clusters, and matured in mostly used barrels. In the vineyard, the evolution has been just as dramatic. The vines' canopies are now rolled, emulating the practice of Domaine Leroy, and a new parcel in Aux Reignots has been planted at a density of fully 20,000 vines per hectare. That's hugely labor-intensive, yet it appears to be paying off, as Lachaux is able to achieve a concentration in the vineyard that permits the most gentle of extraction in the cuverie. (WK)

The 2018 Vosne-Romanée Village perhaps shows the whole-bunch influence more than the other Village Crus, to the point where I might have de-stemmed some bunches. The palate is fresh and crisp on the entry, with fine tannins, and here the whole bunch is better integrated. A saline, marine-influenced finish lingers in the mouth. This should drink after just a couple of years in bottle. Let’s see how the aromatics develop. (NM)