While Prieur’s 2008 Volnay Clos des Santenots (from the estate’s oldest vines) was partly sheltered from the effects of hail that ravaged most of this sector, it reflects yields much lower even than its Volnay stable mates due to the dominance of tiny, millerandage berries. The toasty, smoky notes from barrel approach an almost rancid sense of sweetness that is not easily reconciled in the nose with the wine’s sense of fruit. On the palate, this displays ripe cherry, plum, and grenadine, with the oak thankfully giving ground, but the finish reprises strong smokiness, resin, and caramel that I cannot help thinking are covering over what would be more nuanced features. A hint of dryness and awkward astringency robs the finish of primary juiciness, an effect I am also tempted to attribute to wood, although hail may have played a role. I would want to revisit this (yet again – I tasted it twice this Spring at five weeks’ interval) before making a cellaring recommendation. Certainly one wants to think it is ultimately going to prove more interesting and delicious than the “regular” Santenots, but, for now, I harbor doubts. Martin Prieur, oenologist Nadine Gublin, and their team hung tight in the 2008 vintage and ended up harvesting very ripe-tasting Pinots, at the price of yields dramatically reduced by the necessary selection (to the extent hail and green harvest had not already cut them back). As a group, these 2008s tended toward a not entirely felicitous alliance of tannic abrasion and toasty, smoky, ultimately slightly palate-drying new wood, although many of the wines showed more harmoniously when I re-tasted them in April than they had the month prior, and I have accordingly favored my later impressions in the notes that follow. It may well be true by some measure – as Gublin opined – that the 2008s here are more consistently ripe than were the 2006s, but for now I find more depth, harmony, and charm in the latter. Their 2007s – which the domaine began picking already on August 30 – are not currently displaying much of the charm they showed very early on, and while the estate’s staff hope is that this will be regained (and certainly the wines have “structure” in the sense of tannin), I continue to be skeptical in general about deferring those pleasures that this vintage offers. In many vineyards, incidentally, 2008 represented the third consecutive vintage in which Prieur had harvested scarcely more than 20 hectoliters per hectare. Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700