Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru Cros Parantoux 2005

Deep ruby. This is a further step up in elegance, purity and transparency with cool and reserved black fruit, earth and subtle mineral notes that lead to more minerality on the precise, sweet, vibrant and harmonious flavors that are sleekly muscled on the powerful, long and classy finish. This is a dazzling effort and very "Cros" in style as it remains almost aloof in the fashion of a smaller-scaled Richebourg. A great wine and worth a special search to find but note that patience will be required.

Emmanuel Rouget very frankly describes 2006 as a "vintage that I hope we don't have a repeat of what happened in 1990 and 1991 where the '91s were completely forgotten in favor of the bigger and flashier '90s. 2005 is indeed a very great vintage but 2006 is actually not bad and deserves more attention than it will probably receive, which is too bad for everyone, consumers and producers alike. We began picking on September 23rd and the crop required moderate sorting working and because sugars averaged around 12.3%, it required only a few tenths of a degree of chaptalization. Acidities are quite bright, indeed in this respect they remind me of the 1986s. I did a normal vinification as the phenolics were ripe enough to do that and a total cuvaison of around 20 days. One particularity of the vintage is that I had the longest malos that I have ever had and here we are 14 months later (at the time of my November visit) and the Beaux Monts is still not 100% finished though it's close. Overall, 2006 gave us very good raw materials and the wines will certainly be popular and appreciated if people can simply be persuaded to try them."

Fullish, youthful colour. Good austere black fruit flavours on the nose. Still closed. Fullish body. Very lovely, really rich concentration of fruit on the palate. Very fine.