2007 Chambolle Les Fremieres
By Domaine Leroy
2007 Chambolle Les Fremières from Domaine Leroy, Burgundy, France
The year 2007 was one filled with a curious air of unpredictability in Burgundy, shaping wines with fascinating complexity and unexpected delights. The 2007 Chambolle Les Fremières from Domaine Leroy is a sterling emblem of such distinctive characteristics exhibited by this particular vintage.
Artistry of the Vintner: A Reflection in the Glass
Whilst the season's capricious climate posed challenges, it was the artistry of Lalou Bize-Leroy which coaxed out the innate splendour of the Chambolle Les Fremières terroir. With smaller yields resulting in concentrated flavours, the 2007 vintage interprets this coveted plot's potential with aplomb.
A Vintage that Speaks Volumes
It's essential to note the freshness and vividness brought on by an early harvest underpinning the 2007 selection. This vintage for Domaine Leroy articulates an exhilarating tension between ripeness and acidity. On the nose, one encounters a kaleidoscope of aromas; wild strawberries, damp earth, and a whisper of oak are but a few threads in this intricate tapestry. On the palate, the 2007 Chambolle Les Fremières is poised and precise, offering an elegant array of red fruit against a backdrop of polished tannins that speak to wine collectors keen on maturation potential.
Investors hunting for bottles with significant ageability will be rewarded as Domaine Leroy's handling of the peculiar 2007 growing season results in a wine that not only stands resiliently against time but also promises layers of evolving flavours with cellaring.
A Veritable Investment Piece from Burgundy
The unique climatic conditions of 2007 paired with Domaine Leroy’s deft touch have rendered this Chambolle Les Fremières an exceptionally investable wine. Poised between grace and strength, with whispering hints of its more muscular siblings, this wine strikes a balance that will enchant the palates seeking finesse and complexity. Over my four decades traversing the vinous landscapes, it is vintages like these that enchantingly remind one of nature’s whimsy and winemakers' guile; an amalgam that begets a legacy for both connoisseur and investor alike.
Indeed, for those looking to diversify their portfolio with Burgundian brilliance, adding the 2007 Chambolle Les Fremières from Domaine Leroy could most favourably sit among one’s prestigious collection. It is no mere bottle but a narrative — one that continues to unfurl with each passing year.
Market price (HKD)
HK$399,930.00
12x75cl
Highest score
92
POP score
3486.67
Scores and tasting notes
Leroy’s 2007 Chambolle-Musigny Les Fremiers smells complexly: black tea, hawthorn, wild rose, cherry, blackberry, and sea breeze. Plush and creamy yet buoyant and fresh-fruited, it opens up on the palate a subtle expanse of velvety, mossy forest floor as well as deep stock-like meatiness, finishing with long, intertwined mineral, carnal, floral, ripe black fruit, and arboreal strands. It will merit attention for at least a dozen years. The results Lalou Bize-Leroy achieved in 2006 – as I wrote in my previous red Burgundy report – were especially notable considering the misgivings she expressed early on about that vintage. She appeared more enthusiastic early on about 2007, but in this instance it’s far from merely notable – frankly, it’s utterly improbable – the richness and complexity that the Leroy team has achieved, especially considering that harvesting began here already on August 27! This collection is quite distinctive even from the very few others of its vintage that come even remotely close in quality. These 2007s display a sense of effortless effusiveness, primary juiciness, and – I don’t know how to put this less nebulously – elegance and in the best instances transparency, contrasting with the impressions of tumescent ripeness, coagulation, and new wood veneer that in some vintages accompany the profound richness of Leroy reds. As usual, the wines were all bottled in December, which at least in this vintage seems less difficult to reconcile with their exceptional quality than it does in vintages like 2005 or 2008, when so many of the other top practitioners of red Burgundy emphasize the need for longer elevage. Extremely low yields are of course also a common denominator among Bize-Leroy’s collections, although in the challenging 2007 vintage, she had somewhat more company than usual among fellow-vignerons in the roughly 20 hectoliter-per-hectare range. (And that was bounteous compared with the 13 hectoliters per hectare Bize-Leroy reports having managed in 2008, a vintage from which she did not want to show her bottled wines until June of this year, so that I shall publish notes on them in my follow-up to the present report.) Importer: Martine’s Wines. Novato, CA; tel. (415) 883-0400
David Schildknecht - The Wine Advocate, 28 June 2010