PRE ARRIVAL 2024 Domaine de l'Aste Pommard Vieilles Vignes 750Ml Bottle

This is a fuller bodied, sturdy style that shows impressive concentration and extract, with ripe blue fruit flavour and excellent balance. That is not a “normal” firm, bordering on rustic style, as done so well in Pommard. But rather a juicier, more red-fruited Volnay-style with some (30%) whole-bunch herbal lift. Not that it’s light, but over the last 5 years David has lightened off the extraction a little and changed from the more assertive François Freres barrels to a lightly toasted Tonnellerie Mercurey barrels.
It’s from very old (over 80yo) vines in two low-cropping plots, les Perrieres, just adjacent to Clos des Epenots 1er Cru and one called en Boeuf, a south-facing site a little further up the small Pommard valley. The berries a tiny from these vines and this shows riper dark cherry notes, damp clean earth, a hint of liquorice, spices and a beautiful peacock's tail of complex flavours on the finish.
David Moreau doesn't like harsh tannins, and schooled us in the importance of picking these plots ripe, but not overripe. During the fermentation he only carries out pigeage early on at a lower alcohol and temperature, then after the initial part of the fermentation he starts the more gentle “pump-overs” for a more subtle extraction. Randall