Tasting Notes

WA94

Jacquesson’s roughly 5,000 bottles of 2004 Extra Brut Dizy Corne Bautray issue from (what were then) 44 year-old vines in the cool, breezy upper reaches of the eponymous site. This translates into a metaphorically cool, laid-back wine that for some tasters – and especially when first opened – might seem slightly aloof. But there is dazzling complexity here, as well as the impeccably balance – at near bone dryness – that characterizes all of the Jacquesson bottlings I most recently tasted. Scents of iris, apple pip, peach kernel, quinine, and toasted almond set the tone for piquancy that follows on a palate strongly alkaline in undertone and loaded with bittersweet, illusive inner-mouth floral perfume. Imagine chomping from behind on honeysuckle, stem and all, and you have some inkling of the effect. The sense of transparency here is striking, and there is even more to be glimpsed after the wine has been open for a day, with toasted pumpkin seed, lime rind, and an enhanced vividness of iris perfume emerging. A hint of salinity stimulates the salivary glands in the long, interactively complex, and downright thought-provoking finish. This will seduce you only if you meet it more than half way, and it is not about to shed its silken, mineral-sequined shroud. I suspect it will merit following for more than a decade, though I must confess ignorance with older exemplars of this bottling.

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