A thirty-eight-year-old Pommard from a walled monopole, in the vintage built to go exactly this distance: 1988 was firm, tannic and high in acid, a year that demanded decades and has finally been given them. Grand Clos des Épenots is Domaine de Courcel's own 4.89-hectare enclosure inside Les Grands Épenots, on brown clay-limestone soil only 40 to 60 centimeters deep and studded with limestone rock — Épenots is the Beaune side of Pommard, the perfumed counterweight to Rugiens' iron and muscle. The Courcel family has held this estate since the 1700s, and this bottle predates Yves Confuron's arrival in the cellar in 1996, so it is the older, more classical house style rather than the later-picked, longer-macerated one. It comes from a private cellar rather than the domaine. At this age the tannins have fully resolved and the fruit has turned savory: stand it up a day ahead, decant off the sediment, and drink it that evening.