From 65-year-old vines in a crowded, high elevation “sweet spot”, surrounded by Damodes, Cras, Murgers, and Chaignots, with an altitude and exposition like that of La Tache (says Perrot-Minot) and not far south of the Vosne line and Les Malconsorts, the 2005 Nuits-St.-Georges La Richemone Vieilles Vignes was still in cask when I tasted it. Plum cake, blond tobacco, musk, and brown spices in the nose lead to a juicy, sleek, refined (though abundantly tannic), sweetly black cherry-fruited palate with spice inflections and mysterious meatiness indeed worthy of a top-flight Vosne cru. This finishes with irresistibly fat, flattering fruity intensity and brown spices. The roots go deep into the mother chalk – as Perrot-Minot illustrates by means of a soil cross-section – and the same can be said of the wine’s finish. Importer: Martine’s Wines, Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400.