There are only three barrels this year of Raphet's 2008 Clos Vougeot Vieilles Vignes, a bottling from his oldest vines and best locations in this sprawling, heterogeneous appellation. This doesn't only have a healthier and deeper color than the wines that preceded it in Raphet's 2008 collection, it also displays additional complexity. Soy, pork stock, lightly-cooked black raspberry, blond tobacco, Latakia tobacco, cardamom, and ginger mingle on the nose and on a juicy, savory, saliva-inducing palate. There is a lovely sense of richness and fine-grained tanninity as well as impressive grip, even if it's not especially seductive, let alone finesseful. I suspect that it will be worth following for 6-8 years. Raphet opines that this has shut down since bottling, whereas he indicates surprise that the other wines in his collection - even just a little over a month after they were bottled - taste to him very close to the way they showed from barrel. Gerard Raphet's 2008s finished malo by the end of the following January, which is amazingly early for this vintage, and not necessarily advantageous. (He suspects the environment of his new facility has something to do with that rapidity.) He bottled them last January. As a group these wines are not particularly dark or youthful in color, nor do they for the most part exhibit the sort of brightness that I associate with their vintage. That said, they are generous and charming, often with attractively-integrated hints of caramelization. Yields were way down in both 2007 and 2008, notes Raphet, though one can hardly attribute any special degree of vinous concentration to this fact. In common with me, Raphet finds his 2007s - which to my surprise held their own vis-a-vis 2008 - ideal for drinking young.Peter Vezan Selections (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93