Any doubts that Hubert Chauvenet had nailed the vintage were dispelled by the fine performance of his 2008 Nuits-St.-Georges Aux Thorey, from young vines and a site that he has farmed for less than a decade, until now scoring only modest success in the bottle. Aromatically penetrating as well as palate-staining in its ripe blackberry and cassis tinged by ginger and fruit pit, this deftly integrates its caramelized and faintly resinous elements of oak (even if some – including yours truly – would be happy for a bit less of the latter!) and finishes with exuberant juiciness and a lovely sense of cleansing and invigorating, subtly sweet and spicy length. I miss quite the brightness, refinement, and savor of the Argillas (from more water-retentive, acid-promoting clay soil, as its name suggests), but this is really impressive and ought also to be worth following for a dozen or more years. Hubert Chauvenet testified to normal malos (i.e. finishing in spring – the wines’ first spring that is!). He points to the bright red of his successful 2008s as witness to the health of the corresponding fruit, whereas the 2007s had by the same stage already taken on a hint of garnet, and he tends to agree with me that many 2007s – in which, naturally he did not include his own! – were at their most exuberant and expressive while still in cask. Vigilant canopy-management and aggressive fruit-dropping have long been constants here. Chauvenet’s cellar has now been arranged to permit delivery of his fruit to the fermentation vats via conveyor and to eliminate pumping, and the refinement of tannins and clarity of fruit I witnessed in the best of these 2008s – especially considering that their author still favors high levels of new wood – can almost surely be traced to those developments. And speaking of clarity, Chauvenet pointed out that several of his 2008s are on the edge of what he deems acceptable turbidity and unfortunately resisted naturally clarifying to any greater degree. But after due consideration, he decided to bottle, as usual, without filtration, a wise move I would guess, given how well these 2008s have turned out.Imported by Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 832 9083