95/96

David Schildknecht

Robert Parker/Wine Advocate

The Bouchard 2006 Montrachet offers scents of ripe peach and apricot saline, savory pan drippings patisserie-like marzipan and buttered, fruit paste-filled pastry and exotic, sweet, lily-like floral essences. Deep, savory, meaty and mysteriously mineral undertones compliment the implosively-concentrated fruit essence of this palpably unctuous, powerful yet persistently invigorating wine. It combines head-turning beauty with eyebrow-lifting intrigue and should remain so for at least two decades. In keeping with what he says are his usual intuitions, Philippe Prost picked early – bringing in Chardonnay ahead of Pinot Noir for the first time at Bouchard since 1989 – so as to retain freshness as well as what he termed “the sense of minerality in a vintage of very ripe fruit. But in 1989,” he hastens to add, “yields were perhaps overly generous, whereas in 2006 they are quite reasonable.” The results are consistently impressive. New barrels are generally “seasoned” here through use in wines of lesser appellation (other portions of which are frequently raised in tank), as Prost prefers to employ second year barrels for most of his crus. Injections of inert gas at bottling are among the techniques being used to protect the young wines here from oxidation.