Medium, medium-plus cherry-red. Lovely, soft red fruit with a depth that keeps pulling your nose to the glass. Slightly plump texture, wide and clean, pretty red fruit with a even a little more dimension in the mid-palate. ‘Just right’ acidity, some velvet tannin, if you search, and a good finish. Class in a glass, a very lovely bottle.
Medium-plus colour. Deep, velvety aromas over a hint of volatility that wasn’t there on day one. Smooth, yet with plenty of finely grained, underlying tannin. Long, concentrated and balanced, the fruit is dark before a higher-toned burst of fruit in the mid-palate, there is a nice depth of flavour before the wine slowly fades into the finish. Plenty of structure but it’s not a burly Nuits expression, rather (perhaps) a softer Perrières expression. Very nice wine.
Medium cherry-red colour. The nose starts very unimpressively – burnt-rubber oak is the dominant aroma. 20 minutes in the glass and things are beginning to improve; a little smokiness a little nutmeg spice and high-toned fruit that becomes redder and redder and overlays the toasty oak. The first taste was as disappointing as the nose – muddy, oaky, dirty dishwater flavours. In tandem with the mist lifting from the nose, 20-30 minutes wait delivers a wine of transparency, elegant acidity, definite length, if far from stunning concentration or intensity – the tannin is on a low level with velvet-style texture and no astringency. Time in the glass adds lots of interest and dilutes the dirty dishwater flavour that comes from the oak – eventually I couldn’t taste it at all. For my taste this is far from a great 1er cru, and really doesn’t seem to offer much Gevrey character – I don’t know if it shows Clos du Chapitre character! – but it’s balanced and eventually very tasty with a nice sweetness to the fruit. Given the price, it shows reasonable value, but do decant!
Medium, medium-plus colour. The nose is darkly-fruited, a little mineral and spicy – it almost smells tannic – very interesting and open, time makes it a little creamier and just a shade redder. Despite ’smelling’ tannic, the considerable structure is almost entirely hidden under a smooth, slightly linear but intense dark fruit. There is an impressive extra dimension of faintly creamy, dark fruit that forms a reprise in the finish. Today it’s far from an elegant pinot – you will have to wait for that – but it is an exciting and rumbustious mouth-full of Morey – serious fun, in a glass.
Medium-colour. A sweet-ish, slightly meaty but rather more diffuse nose than I’d like – a little oaky cola too before finally giving way to some finer red berry notes. Fresh and quite intense, relatively velvet texture with a dark fruit personality. There’s a sneaky extra fruit dimension in the mid-palate – which is nice. The finish is reasonably long if rather understated. There are no nasty bits here, but for a Rugiens I find this rather underpowered, or should I say, rather ‘under-interested’. I liked it, but it hovers close to a grand cru price and I don’t see what’s in the glass as an ‘added value’ 1er – it was certainly trumped by yesterday’s Morey. I wouldn’t turn away if it ended up in the sales however!
Medium, medium-plus colour. The first vintage from Arnaud Mortet with some help in the background during harvesting from Claire Forestier. This seems a different interpretation versus what follows, but I add the caveat that this is also the youngest wine so showing the most young, fat fruit. Wide aromas of mainly dark shaded fruit and a faint hint at something volatile – at this stage, more fruit-forward than other vintages. This fills your mouth with plenty of fruity dimension and understated though balanced acidity. The almost saline, mineral quality of the other vintages starts on a much lower register though eventually begins to make its mark on the finish. The tannin seems very polished though this is the only wine here to show any oak texture on the good finish.
Wide with a forward black-cherry note, even a hint of Sage – slowly a beautiful clear note of fruit runs through the middle – very precocious, very impressive. Fine tannin with good acidity that forms the basis of a lovely mouth-watering finish – and there’s even a little reprise after a minute. Wide on the palate with fruit that’s almost as good as nose. A really super wine that had the density and presence to walk all over the ‘95 Pomerol (Lagrange) that preceded it.
Pale to medium yellow. The nose is just a little tight, ripe but tight. In the mouth there’s width, density and a very sneaky extra dimension in the mid-palate – it’s very impressive. What’s less impressive is an apparent lack of energy – I think it really needs a bit more acidity. Very nice, but no wow.
Relatively deep colour with purple hints. The nose starts with sugary dark fruit of real depth, though less width – slowly it adds a creamy coating and eventually red berry notes begin to peek through. Fresh impact and plenty of extract too; the wine/wood tannins are smooth and impart an acceptably bitter note through the core of the wine – the sweetness of the dark cherry fruit is quite enough to balance, mixed with iron and minerals. The tannin and some of the bitterness are the main items of note in the finish, though these will fade and bring to the fore the creamy fruit that plays second fiddle today. It impresses now, but it will clearly impress more in the future.
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