The 2015 Clos Saint-Denis Très Vieilles Vignes Grand Cru has a very elegant and stylish bouquet with red cherry, crushed strawberry and bergamot scents the unfurl in the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with ripe dark cherries, raspberry and cranberry fruit, quite pointed acidity but with good balance on the structured, lightly spiced finish. This was showing better than several other grand crus at the time of tasting from barrel.

The 2014 Clos St Denis Très Vieilles Vignes Grand Cru takes its time to open in the glass, but eventually offers raspberry preserve, wild strawberry and distant estuarine scents mixed with desiccated orange peel. The palate is medium-bodied and supple in the mouth. This is very well proportioned, very focused with a noticeable saline tang on the finish. It will deserve 4-5 years in bottle; it is a bit broody and introverted now, but it has the substance to blossom.

The 2013 Clos Saint Denis Très Vieilles Vignes Grand Cru has a lot of reduction on the nose. Once you get past that, the palate feels firm in the mouth with dense, brittle brambly black fruit cut through with a citric thread of acidity and quite a powerful finish that demonstrates good backbone - a Clos Saint Denis not to be messed around with and demanding respect. That said, I don't believe that it will turn out to be as complex as the Clos de la Roche, quite masculine but you cannot deny the symmetry in situ.

The 2009 Clos St. Denis Cuvee Tres Vieilles Vignes, from vines planted in 1905, is a weightless, elegant wine laced with crushed raspberries, autumn leaves, licorice and subtle earthiness. The wine flows through effortlessly to the long, impeccably textured finish. Yields were a minuscule 12 hectoliters per hectare here. (sold in a mixed case of 12 bottles at $6,600 per case) Anticipated maturity: 2019-2039. 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