The 2019 Nuits-Saint-Georges wafts from the glass with notes of cherries, wild berries, sweet soil tones, peonies and raw cocoa. Medium to full-bodied, velvety and layered, its ample core of ripe but lively fruit largely conceals the wine's powdery structuring tannins.
Jean-Nicolas Méo began picking on September 13, observing that "everything was ripe at once this year," and that alcohol levels—for the most part, around 14%—were a little higher than he would have wished for. Yet the wines in the glass are hard to fault: Méo excelled in 2018, and his 2019s are even more structurally refined and vibrant. As I've written before, Méo's wines see quite a long élevage, and they can often be a little structural and introverted in the fall following the vintage, but these 2019s, just like the 2018s at the same stage last year, were remarkably open for inspection. Displaying superb concentration and mid-palate amplitude without any particular perception of heaviness, I found much to admire; and, in summation, this is a very fine portfolio that, when taken as a set, appears to match or surpass what was achieved here in 2018.