The Pommard Cuvee Dames de la Charite (Hospices de Beaune) has a dark ruby color and a gorgeous bouquet of plummy ripe fruit. This fat, oily-textured, and medium-to-full-bodied wine is intense, fresh, and has a massively sweet core of cherries, black raspberries, and raspberries intermingled with abundant spicy oak. While well-crafted, it lacks the punch of Laurent's three previous wines and finishes on an excessively oaky and slightly rough (tannic) note. Anticipated maturity: 2001-2006. A Patrick Lesec Selection (Paris Fax # 011-33-1-42-84-38-22), various American importers (starting with the 1997 vintage Laurent will be represented by a number of US importers/brokers, including Lesec, Jeffrey Davies, and Martin-Scott.

I purchased this bottle of the 1943 Pommard Cuvée Dame de la Charité from a very cold cellar in northern France, and it was drinking beautifully, wafting from the glass with aromas of plums, cassis, woodsmoke and sweet soil tones, complemented by hints of orange rind and vanillin. Medium to full-bodied, velvety and precise, it's bright and lively, with a sapid core of fruit and more than vestigial powdery structuring tannins. Likely produced without copper in the vineyards, sugar in the winery or sulfur in either the vineyards or the cellar, this is a wonderfully preserved wartime Burgundy.