Alphonse Mellot has been running the domaine of his eponymous father and grandfather for 17 years (since he was 20). The 2005 Sancerre Rouge Generation XIX certainly displays Mellot’s ambition in its deep color, sheer concentration, evident extraction, and obviously top-grade oak. Whether this wine might be even better had it reflected more relaxation and less ambition will, I am sure, be a controversial question. Tart blackberry, wood smoke and resin aromas segue into an intensely bitter-sweet, powerful, ester-rich palate saturated with blackberry, toasted nuts, and a strikingly cyanic note as if the must had been macerated on cherry pits. A faintly drying note of wood tannin faintly disturbs what is otherwise a forceful finish as black-fruited and piquant as what went before. Various importers including Domaine Select, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799 and Elite Wines, Lorton, VA; tel. (703) 339-8150