Landanger's 2006 Volnay Caillerets smells of fresh cherry, wood smoke, brown spices, lemon zest, and high-toned maraschino; comes to the palate invigoratingly tart, spicy, and chalky; and finishes with emphatic fruit and spice though also a certain severity of tannin. It should remain fresh for the better part of a decade, but whether its tannins will permit it to unbutton and seduce I am less sure. And if it's intriguing complexity one craves, far better this vintage to buy the version of Caillerets from Pousse d'Or's monopole Clos des 60 Ouvrees.
Patrick Landanger reports having fermented longer and worked harder to extract flavor from his 2006 crop, and while the results are undeniably concentrated, on the occasion of my tasting, several suffered a bit from opacity and tannic severity.
Importer: Langdon-Shiverick Imports, Cleveland, OH; tel. (216) 861 6800 and a Peter Vezan Selection, Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93