This is one of the few Leroy '09s to display much in the way of overt wood influence though even here it's not enough to really intrude on the attractiveness of the cool and intensely mineral-inflected red berry fruit and earth suffused aromas. The concentrated and beautifully well-delineated flavors possess excellent mid-palate concentration as well as outstanding intensity before terminating in a wonderfully persistent finish. As fine as this is, and this is among the most sophisticated of these grands crus, it is not at the same level as all but the Richebourg.
Lalou Bize-Leroy deems 2009 to be a "very nice vintage. During the growing season I wasn't sure what we were going to wind up with in terms of grape quality as the maturities advanced very slowly. But in the end the vines did what they needed to do and the wines reflect that quality. The yields were a bit more generous that what we're used to as across all of our appellations they averaged about 24 hl/ha, which is quite a bit more than say the 13 hl/ha we obtained in 2008. The 2009s are exceptionally rich and ripe and they remind me of the 1964s." In other news, Bize-Leroy told me that she bought 7 ouvrées (about .3 ha) of Bâtard situated on the Puligny side from Domaine Jean-Paul Bavard of Puligny-Montrachet. Included in the sale was also a parcel of Puligny villages that measures .73 ha. These parcels will be added to her Domaine d'Auvenay operation. I was told through a separate, and to my knowledge reliable, source that the price for the Bâtard was an astronomical 1.1 million euros per ouvrée (.0428 ha), or about 25 million euros ($32.5 million) per hectare. Otherwise expressed, this is approximately $13.5 million per acre. If we conservatively assign an opportunity cost of 10% to the capital costs and further assume a generous (at least by the usual production standards chez Leroy) 35 to 40 hl/ha yield, this translates to a simple opportunity per bottle cost of $650 to $750! And this is before the standard costs of production that include labor, materials, barrels and so forth. We'll see what the retail price turns out to be but simple logic strongly suggests that it will not be cheap. The Leroy '09s were bottled in December, 2010.
