This is both more aromatically restrained and more elegant than the Clos de la Roche with its reluctant nose of rose petal, spiced tea and red and dark berry fruit aromas. There is a really lovely mouth feel to the refined middle weight flavors that exude a discreet bead of minerality that adds a bit of lift to the intense, balanced, focused and beautifully balanced finish. Textbook Clos St. Denis.

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Tasted blind at the Burgfest tasting in Beaune, Domaine Dujac's 2013 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru has a more backward and reticent nose than that of Bichot's, but it is well defined with clever use of stems, wonderful mineralité and poise while translating the essence of the vineyard. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannin, well judged acidity, clean and pure with superb balance on the harmonious finish that has just a little hardness at the moment. It's a proper "sit and wait" Grand Cru, but both the sitting and waiting will be worth it. Tasted September 2016.

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Anyway. This is super purple, but I suppose that can't really be a surprise. The nose was quite stemmy initially, leading me to worry a little bit about the green meanies, but fortunately air actually blew that away and every was hunky dory again. There's a slight bit of brown baking spice on the nose, but it's not the same thing as the Dujac spice and it seems to me that the Dujac-iness of this wine isn't showing clearly at the moment. I also noticed a beet odour, which correlates with my hearing from the grapevine that some thought the 13s were similar to the 06s. The palate is just super juicy at the moment, and the same beet flavour seems to be there as well. This sits in the middle on the red/black spectrum, and seems just a tad on the sweet side, though likely it's the baby fat. I'm optimistic about this wine, especially the improvement it saw with air, and I've saved a glass for the next day. This has gotten far more expressive the next day, with a lot of the primary notes dissipating into much more complexity. A little bit of earthiness starts to develop as well, which is really exciting. In fact, I've popped the score up a notch, given all of these developments. I think the key is to give this at least 12 hours of air if you want to attack one now, and a fair bit of sleep in the cellar is the better call.

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