2007 Lucien Le Moine Romanée St. Vivant- France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Romanée St. Vivant Grand Cru (8/2/2010)
A couple of caveats here. I know these are young. I like to try one of my six at or near release to get a gauge. My cellar is also pretty young on the Burgundy side. Also, almost every time I have posted a note on young Le Moine’s I get the oak question. Is it too modern? Is it too oaky? I have thoroughly enjoyed every young Le Moine I have tried from 05, 06, and 07, and have found them all compelling and approachable (for their age), and have never even had an oak/wood thought. With that… I was very disappointed in this very expensive oak bomb. Over many hours this wine could never work itself around the vanilla oak dry mesquite nose that permeated every aspect of the wine. I’d love to tell you that the fruit was rich, or that the other constituent parts were all good, but I could never get past the obvious problem.
I would love to hear from David Schildknecht, Meadows, or Tanzer on this wine as they all loved it. I have thought David nailed every other Le Moine wine that we both have tasted. I wonder what happened to my bottle as neither one of the three mentioned oak or wood treatment. Oh yea, Mike De Lange, please chime in.
2007 was the leanest/transparent vintage which could not support as much new oak would be my guess. If I’m not mistaken he only makes 1 barrel of this so it’s 100% new oak.
Welcome to the (mostly) disappointing world of Le Moine.
After 4 years of buying (and drinking) his wines, I have had far, far too many disappointing ones (and relative to the critics continual high scores this doesn’t make sense). This is one producer I will never buy again…and they have also become very expensive for what they are…
No doubt many lovers of this style though seem to like them, and though I have heard he has changed with recent vintages, I am yet to really see this as your note suggests.
My other experiences have been so good. Never had one like this one though… puzzling. I believe he made two barrels and most of the critic’s scores look like in barrel samples.
I’ve reprinted my note from a few months ago and I can only agree with you. This seems to be a wine which has seen more new oak than it can absorb, although the bottle I had was still drinkable for peope less oak-shy than myself. Yours sounds far worse! So, I have to side with Leo on this one, as this was my first bottle from Lemoine and it’s likely to stay that way for some time to come. It’s hard to obtain here, expensive and I’m not at all convinced that I like their general style. As for the critics, I trust my own palate above all others and so should you.
Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru “Gaudichots” 2007 – Maison Lucien Lemoine
This wine has a medium-plus intense ruby core and very little clearing at the edge. It’s even more dense than the Perrot-Minot. Medium-plus intense notes of damsons, red flowers, five-spice powder and anise are marred somewhat by candy floss-like wood notes.
The body is medium-plus on the attack and this La Tâche cut-out is impressively dense on the mid-palate for a 2007, where it exhibits nice sève, more plums and sweet wood spice. Unfortunately, the texture is slightly spoiled by a phenolic edge, which serves to accentuate the presence of the woolly medium tannins. The acidity is medium-plus, lends freshness and the initially medium-plus flavour intensity shifts to another gear on the very intense finish, although here too, the phenol-enhanced tannins have the last word after half a minute.
There is no doubt that this wine was made from very good material, but it’s too obviously laboured to merit top marks in my book. I feel that less new oak would have yielded a more balanced and therefore better wine. 90 points and this might improve as much as three with a minimum of 6 years in the cellar.
I was told by someone who has sold the wines that they are designed for people who wish to drink things that taste like californian pinots but have great burgundian vineyard names on the labels, and that it was rather a cynical operation with financial considerations clearly at the forefront. I think this is rather harsh, though, and I’ve had some surprisingly classic 99s.