Clos de la Roche, Nicolas Potel 2005

Potel's 2005 Clos de la Roche smells sweetly of cherry liqueur, blond tobacco, honey and iris. If this were a white wine if would be a nobly sweet one. Explosively intense in the mouth, with sappy, sweet cherry, quarry dust, tobacco, pungent flowers, citrus zest, and gradually emerging hints of game, it finishes with almost indelible sweetness and complexity.

A flat out gorgeous nose features violets, red pinot fruit and black berry notes trimmed in a deft touch of wood that gives way to rich, full and sweet flavors that possess unusually good detail, all wrapped in a powerful, deep and exceptionally long finish. This is also impeccably well balanced and should improve for at least a decade.