Leroux’s 2008 Volnay Fremiets offers fresh ginger, cinnamon, hickory smoke, and herbal essences along with its fresh cherry and plum, a tactile impingement of spice, smoke, and fruit skin chew lending an enervating cast but at the same time reinforcing the sensation of tannic grit, albeit relatively fine-grained. This delivers abundant juicy primary fruit and sheer refreshment, promising to stimulate and delight for at least 8-10 years. Leroux opines that his recent years of working his vines biodynamically is beginning to bear fruit both literally and figuratively in a more distinctive and elegant expression of this site. Benjamin Leroux experienced the latest picking of his career in 2008 (not commencing until September 29) and second earliest in 2007 (commencing August 30, but then with fits and starts). As he was the first to bring up, though, the former would have been deemed “normal” two decades or more ago. “For all the difficulties we had in the vineyards,” he remarked, “in the end 2008 was easy to harvest, since the prolonged north wind took care of the triage. In fact, we did more triage in the cellar in 2009 than in 2008. And, like 2007, the vinification was not complicated. The yields, though, were down in 2008 to a mere 20 hectoliters per hectare, except in the Clos des Epeneaux, where we got 25.” The 2008s here were in tank awaiting bottling when I tasted them in mid-April – having at last finished malo-lactic conversion in autumn – all but one having only recently been racked from barrel. (For wines and news of Leroux’s negociant project, see my notes under the heading “Leroux.”) A Becky Wasserman Selection, Le Serbet (various importers); fax 011-333-80-24-29-70