The 2008 Clos de la Roche Cuvee Vieilles Vignes is a silky, elegant wine. Freshly cut roses, dark red fruit and minerals sit on a core of utterly refined tannins. This shows stunning balance in a weightless style that gains energy on the clean, focused finish. This is a fabulous effort from Ponsot. Anticipated maturity: 2018-2033. This set of 2009s from Laurent Ponsot was among the finest I tasted. The wines are simply dazzling from top to bottom. Ponsot was among the last to harvest in 2009, essentially starting when most, if not all, of his colleagues already had the fruit in their cellars. The fruit was 100% destemmed and the wines were vinified in oak vats. The wines were then racked into barrel for the malos, where many of them stayed with no further rackings. There is no new oak at Ponsot. The barrels range from 5 to 50 years of age. The range now includes a head spinning eleven Grand Crus, which now total an astonishing 70% of the estate’s total production. Ordinarily I would suggest cellaring the top 2009s for a minimum of 15 years or so, but now that Ponsot is bottling all of his wines with synthetic plastic corks made in Italy it is hard to know exactly how the wines will develop. I tasted all of the 2009s from barrel, where they had been aging since finishing their malolactic fermentations. Importer: Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; tel. (205) 980-8802