This 0.29ha parcel was planted (or replanted) in two stages - the 1930s and 1978 - so it has a high average age but plenty of concentration and complexity. It's one of my red wines of the vintage in 2017, with a heavenly perfume, lovely wild strawberry and summer orchard scents, fine-grained tannins, some sweet spices and refreshing minerality. Stunning. Drinking Window 2023 - 2035.

The 2017 Richebourg from Domaine Hudelot-Noellat is also a stunning wine, showing a beautifully elegant vintage veneer to its aromatic constellation of red and black cherries, plums, chocolate, gamebird, a nice base of soil tones, violets and vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, long and quite soil-driven for a young Richebourg, with a sappy core of fruit, ripe, seamless tannins and a long, vibrant and energetic finish. This too is just stellar. 2030-2100.

An exotic and ultra-spicy nose features notes of plum, violet, orange pekoe tea, sandalwood, anise and an interesting hint of clove. The intense, muscular and driving large-scaled flavors possess unusually good concentration in the context of the 2017 vintage while exhibiting an almost pungent minerality on the austere, backward and very tightly wound finish that just goes on and on. This built to age effort is already a knock out and if it can add even more depth with time in bottle, it could potentially be brilliant.

The king of the cellar is the 2017 Richebourg Grand Cru, a brooding wine that unfurls in the glass with notes of raspberries, candied peel, exotic spice, Asian plum sauce, dark chocolate and rose petals. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, satiny and concentrated, its fine structuring tannins entirely cloaked in fruit, displaying more depth and incipient complexity than the Romanee-Saint-Vivant, concluding with a long, succulent and beautifully delineated finish. This is a very compelling Richebourg from the talented Charles Van Canneyt. This is a successful vintage for Charles Van Canneyt at Domaine Hudelot-Noellat. The wines are supple and charming, gaining in-depth, seriousness and complexity as one ascends the hierarchy of appellations and vine age. After the concentrated and compelling 2015s and 2016s, both vintages built for the cellar despite their decidedly different styles, 2017 represents a high quality but more immediate, structurally open-knit year for the Domaine, and for impatient consumers, that is no bad thing. The domaine's roster of appellations will be familiar to readers by now, with the exception of a promising new Meursault from the lieu-dit Clos des Ecoles,a parcel formerly farmed by the Domaine Coche-Dury.

The 2017 Richebourg Grand Cru has a beautiful bouquet, very succinct and understated for a Richebourg and oh so precise. The palate is medium-bodied with strict tannin, a pinch of black pepper and bay leaf, and much more vibrant toward the finely structured finish. This is masculine and introspective, a Richebourg that will require considerable aging. At least at this stage, I feel the Romanee-Saint-Vivant has more charm and complexity.