Nuits St Georges les Vaucrains, Domaine Robert Chevillon 2014

Sweet spot OutstandingAmple wood spice is present on the brooding and deeply pitched nose of plum, dark currant, smoked meat and sauvage scents. Though this is an overtly powerful and muscular wine the seductively textured mid-palate is velvety thanks to the copious amount of dry extract that also buffers the notably firm tannic spine on the gorgeously long finale. This strikingly good effort will be approachable somewhat earlier than usual but make no mistake this is still going to require a long stay in a cool cellar.

Tasted blind at the Burgfest 2014 tasting, the 2014 Nuits St Georges 1er Cru les Vaucrains has a deep, evolving bouquet with more black fruit than red, quite minerally and tensile with fine delineation. It appears to gain vigor with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tension and impressive structure. It has the substance and depth to suggest a 2014 built for the long haul, and while it is rough around the edges at the moment, I expect it will be glorious in a decade's time. Chevillon's best wine of the vintage? I think so. Tasted September 2017. Drink Date 2019 - 2039

Always shown last in tastings at the domaine, this comes from two 80-year-old parcels in this excellent Premier Cru. Firm, brooding and densely structured, this is the most Nuits-like of the Chevillons’ wines. Savoury, sweet, yet quite firm, it’s a sinewy, age worthy red. Drink 2020-30