Bouchard Père & Fils : Beaune 1er cru "Grèves Vigne de L'Enfant Jésus" Domaine 2018

Intense and tightly wound, this red displays a laser beam of cherry and berry fruit, with an underlying mineral element and steely structure. It's concentrated and long, yet needs time to reveal all its facets. Best from 2023 through 2040. 150 cases imported.

Bouchard’s evocatively named parcel is a monopole holding that covers 3.9ha on sand and gravel soils in the heart of Beaune Grèves. Picked early but still nicely ripe, this shows tobacco pouch and clove aromas from 20% whole bunches, layers of mulberry and raspberry fruit, aromatic 20% new wood and a backdrop of sinewy, granular tannins.

A rich, creamy-textured red with ripe strawberry, chocolate, stone and hazelnut aromas and flavors. It’s full and layered with attractive fruit and lightly chewy yet polished tannins. Flavorful finish. Subtle, yet structured. Try after 2022.

The 2018 Beaune Grèves Vigne de L'Enfant Jesus 1er Cru has an attractive bouquet with brambly red and black fruit, fine definition, somehow a little sedate yet harmonious and appealing. The palate is medium-bodied with gentle grip and fine backbone. The oak impedes slightly towards the finish though that will be absorbed with another couple of years in bottle. Fine. Tasted blind at the Burgfest 2018 red tasting.

Revisited from bottle, the 2018 Beaune 1er Cru Les Grèves Vigne de l'Enfant Jesus is showing very well, unfurling in the glass with a brooding bouquet of dark berry fruit, ripe cherries, warm spices, baking chocolate and subtle soil tones. Medium to full-bodied, deep and muscular, it's rich and powerful, with ripe tannins and a voluminous core of fruit, concluding with a long, heady finish. When I tasted this wine from barrel, Bouchard's Frédéric Weber observed that analytically this 2018 is very similar indeed to the 1947 vintage of l'Enfant Jesus, and in its controlled but overt ripeness the analogy seems even more obvious from bottle.