Brand: Domaine Joseph Roty
Country: France
Region: Burgundy
Vintage: 2015
Rating: 96
WA96: The 2015 Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru Très Vieilles Vignes is fabulous, blossoming in the glass with a deep bouquet of wild berry fruit, cassis, coniferous forest floor, incense, rose petal and wood smoke. On the palate, the wine is multidimensional, expansive and full-bodied, with fabulous concentration and depth and wonderful sappy energy, its ripe tannins cloaked in layer after layer of fruit. A beautiful Charmes-Chambertin, from some of the oldest vines in Burgundy.
VM95+: Good dark red but not as ruby as in some past very ripe years. Initially a bit stunted, even fermentative, on the nose, this wine opened with air to show much more precise notes of small wild red and purple fruits, licorice pastille and lavender. The very pure, sweet purple fruits are lifted on the palate by lavender and violet notes but this is stubbornly backward today, like a blueprint for a great Burgundy. Penetrating minerality and firm acidity should give this very stylish, utterly seamless wine a long future, but will it ever show the sweetness of the Griottes?