Tasted blind at the Burgfest tasting in Beaune, the 2013 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Clos Saint-Jacques from Jean-Marie Fourrier has a generous nose of brambly red fruit, a touch of sage and broom, well defined and with plenty of fruit. The palate is medium-bodied with light tannins compared to Bruno Clair's own Clos Saint Jacques, but there is precision and character here, the terroir very expressive with superb mineralité towards the long and sustained finish, a ferrous note persistent on the aftertaste. This is a wine of tremendous transparency and it is totally engaging. Tasted September 2016

A remarkably elegant and exuberantly spicy nose features an airy and cool mix of raspberry, cherry, red currant and plenty of wet stone characters. There is superb intensity to the mineral-driven, pure and ultra-refined middle weight flavors that are shaped by very fine-grained tannins on the moderately austere, balanced, saline and wonderfully persistent finish. A classic Clos St. Jacques of class and grace. *Outstanding*

Good dark red. Sexy aromas of raspberry, mocha and complex soil tones. Offers superb thickness of texture for the vintage but very restrained today, showing a strong sappy, saline character but little in the way of easy sweetness. Less detailed at present than the Combe aux Moines but this is fatter and riper. The saline quality carries through to the firmly tannic, very long finish. This wine will need time to reveal its floral high notes.

On the nose, that immediate sense of layering and mystery that says ‘grand cru’, which of course Clos-Saint-Jacques is, in all but law. Backward and angular, but so much material here.