The Burgaud 2008 Morgon Cote de Py Javernieres displays a resinous hint of oak but beyond that a more fascinating aromatic complexity of cassis, blackberry, bacon, and herbs. Palate-staining in its sappy intensity and persistently bright and smoky, this impressive bottling nonetheless confirms my impression that extended barrique elevage did not – and he agrees – pay additional dividends with Burgaud’s raw 2008 material in the way that I feel confident it will with his top 2009s (which, as noted in my account of them, he plans to bottle earlier than he did their 2008 counterparts). Incidentally, the same individual barrels were employed for the maturation of Burgaud’s 2009 Javernieres, the contents of one of which exhibited an overtly resinous overtone, leading it to be culled from the final assemblage. I wonder how this 2008 will age, but would cellar some watchfully. If there were any doubt that Jean-Marc Burgaud’s talents match his considerable ambitions, his 2009s should put them to rest, as few if any finer collections of Beaujolais are likely to have been rendered in this or any other vintage. “They tasted good on the vine, good in the fermenter, good before malo, good after malo, and, so far, good in the bottle. Good balance, fine acidity, perfect maturity, zero grams of unfermented sugar, and alcohol from 13% to 13.5% – excellent but not excessive,” is the way Burgaud laughingly litanizes his results, but the wines are far more colorful – indeed, exciting – than that summary suggests. Given their quality and distinctiveness, one has to forgive Burgaud his proliferation of cuvees – indeed, anybody lucky enough to latch onto a share of his limited bottlings from this vintage will want to profusely thank him! Burgaud elected to give his early bottlings a light filtration – and was contemplating the same approach for his (“regular”) Cote de Py – because he said he wanted to preserve their vivid fruit, whereas they would have had to stay in barrel through summer to clarify sufficiently on their own. (If there were any ill-effects of that filtration on his early bottlings, I clearly couldn’t discern them.) Except for his three rarest cuvees – aged entirely in demi-muids or barriques – elevage of each Burgaud wine is spread between tank and demi-muids.A Thomas Calder Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011-33-1-46-45-15-29; also imported by Ideal Wine and Spirits, Medford, MA; tel. (781) 395-3300