Ponsot Morey Saint Denis Cuvee des Alouettes 1er Cru 2008 750ml

Wine Advocate #194 ,2nd May 2011 By Antonio Galloni
The 2008 Morey St. Denis Cuvee des Alouettes is a striking wine that shows the delicate, feminine side of Morey. The wine blossoms on the mid-palate as the fruit gains in textural depth and richness. Notes of salinity round out the finish. Anticipated maturity: 2018-2028.This set of 2009s from Laurent Ponsot was among the finest I tasted. The wines are simply dazzling from top to bottom. Ponsot was among the last to harvest in 2009, essentially starting when most, if not all, of his colleagues already had the fruit in their cellars. The fruit was 100% destemmed and the wines were vinified in oak vats. The wines were then racked into barrel for the malos, where many of them stayed with no further rackings. There is no new oak at Ponsot. The barrels range from 5 to 50 years of age. The range now includes a head spinning eleven Grand Crus, which now total an astonishing 70% of the estate’s total production.

At Domaine Ponsot wine is produced out of fashion. These choices are not dictated by a sort of occult resulting from what is now called the "non-interventionism." Instead, it is much more difficult to resist, even though human, correct individual defects occurring during aging of wines, or to act upstream of the culture of the vine to standardize quality and guard against the vagaries of climate. At Domaine Ponsot they love wine. They love it because it is alive.
The philosophy of field Ponsot have three types of viticulture that are pest management, organic farming and biodynamics are all based on a negative conclusion: the man went too far in its quest for profitability and is not worried about the future of the vine. And it is a reality they have no doubt. Domaine Ponsot, this concern or rather this approach with respect for nature is very old. It is a reflection of all the so-called "peasant" based on common sense tradition. And all generations since the founding of the area in 1872 agreed with this love of nature and therefore it is observed. And all that is preached today in patterns of three ways to work mentioned above is implemented for ages at Domaine Ponsot, but are not obliged to invent a name to describe the operation of culture. Far modes, they have always tried to express through a "natural" cultural richness of the Burgundian. Human intervention is limited and only applied to the care that the vine needs, without ever trying to force him into anything In summary, the long tradition of their family in this light left to Nature the most part, today brings them a particularly good state of their vineyard. And any intervention on their part is dictated by circumstances and appeals to common sense on the one hand and the more natural the other products. What they do is always rediscovered today by the majority of technicians and hence it has been necessary to invent names to describe practical yet well known ... There are hundreds of years!