Bonnes Mares Grand Cru Reviews

The 2014 Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru, containing 80% whole cluster fruit this year, has a focused, delineated nose, perhaps missing the exuberance that this vineyard can bestow, but it unfurls nicely in the glass revealing touches of woodland and undergrowth (actually quite Musigny-like!). The palate is fresh on the entry with a fine line of acidity, great tension and focus here with a slightly tapered and yet long and tender finish. This is a sophisticated Bonnes Mares that is a little teasing out of barrel, but will grow up into a great, perhaps more 'serious' wine.

A pungent nose presently consists of wood toast and reduction. Interestingly the massively constituted flavors are even bigger, richer and more powerful and the copious amount of dry extract is seriously impressive and this is just as well as the tannic spine is markedly prominent on the driving and strikingly long finish. This is a brute of wine yet like the Mazoyères it manages to avoid being rustic though with that being said, no one is likely to find this to be particularly refined. A "buy and forget you own it" wine.

The 2010 Bonnes-Mares is at once powerful yet sensual and totally enveloping. Layers of fruit resonate from this deep, baritone Bonnes-Mares. All of the elements continue to build towards the huge, explosive finish. The Bonnes-Mares is a wine with a bright future, but it will require considerable patience along the way.

Bright medium red. Sexy, almost exotic sweetness to the aromas of cherry, raspberry, wild herbs and stone. Wonderfully ripe but dry, conveying a rare combination of outstanding volume and great finesse without any impression of dryness--or easy sweetness, for that matter. A classic uncompromising young Bonnes-Mares but without the hardness of old-style wines from this long-aging grand cru. The spicy finish rises inexorably. As youthful as this is, its remarkably fine-grained texture gives it an easy digestibility. This protected site really seals in the heat, said Vincent, who brought in this fruit at close to 13% potential alcohol and did not chaptalize.

The 2010 Bonnes-Mares is at once powerful yet sensual and totally enveloping. Layers of fruit resonate from this deep, baritone Bonnes-Mares. All of the elements continue to build towards the huge, explosive finish. The Bonnes-Mares is a wine with a bright future, but it will require considerable patience along the way. Anticipated maturity: 2025-2040.  

The 2015 Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru comes from the domaines parcel in "Terres Rouges", in fact, the last vineyard before you reach Morey-Saint-Denis. It has a very correct, almost reserved bouquet at first, like several wines from this vineyard at the moment. It is very terroir-expressive with hints of slate and gun flint emerging with time in the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with a sorbet-like freshness on the entry, here more of the Bonnes-Mares opulence and richness coming through, building to a bravura finish of orange zest, black fruit and spices that leaves the tongue tingling long after the wine has departed. Outstanding.