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Tasting note
From a single parcel of very old vines representing around 30% of the Desvignes’ acreage in Javernieres; treated to extended fermentation and tank elevage; and essayed for the first time in this vintage, their 2009 Morgon Javernieres Les Impenitents delivers a confitured and almost liqueur-like concentration of black raspberry and black licorice. Along with this polished and plush wine’s richness come a certain sense of opacity and diminution of primary juiciness or minerality, although it does evince a vague underlying sense of wet stone. A bottle that had been opened for a day did not reveal significant additional nuance, though in terms of richness and sheer persistence, either bottle couldn’t help but impress. Perhaps this will be longer-lived than its siblings – I won’t speculate, absent any track record – but from my present perspective, I can’t help thinking that it represents a case of overreach and probably also a missed opportunity to have rendered a single Javernieres bottling significantly more impressive even than the “regular” one that was in fact bottled under that designation. (There is a 2010 Les Impenitents, but – amazingly – it had not yet finished its malo-lactic conversion when I visited in June!)
Score: 90
David Schildknecht, The Wine Advocate, August 2011