Every Sunday at 7:30 am I'm going deep into my wine cellar to pull out the last of some very great bottles. I promise rare wines for the cellar- builder in very limited quantities, gems of astonishing quality carrying highly pedigreed labels that will tempt the most temperate among us.

So, don't hit the snooze! These wines will be gone, gone, gone, quickly.

"At their very best, the Côte de Beaune '06s are classic burgundies that mirror the finest wines from the Côte de Nuits. This is to say that they are exceptionally aromatic and elegant with the best transparency to the underlying terroir since the 2001s, all wrapped in admirably persistent finishes with fine detail and a more pronounced sense of minerality than most vintages possess. They really are gifted in terms of their transparency, indeed the finest examples are what I would call crystalline and because they are moderately concentrated, neither light nor dense and moderately ripe, neither surmature or under ripe, there is relatively little to get in the way of this clarity, save of course for clumsy or inept winemaking." - Allen Meadows, Burghound

I'm convinced that if you were to ask twenty people to describe the taste of their ideal Burgundy wine, they would unknowingly describe a Pommard.

Why Pommard? Because a Pommard strikes a magical balance between dark-color, muscularity, full-bodied richness and pure, intriguing Pinot Noir complexity. There are not a lot of Burgundies that can claim that. Others may be elegant, spicy, nuanced, but rarely possess the chewiness of a Pommard.

I didn't realize that Paul Garaudet made a Pommard until many years after I started drinking his excellent Monthelie and Meursault. I really can't fault Paul. He only owns just over one hectare. His entire Pommard production is about 150 cases.

He'd held out an offering to me in his cellar during one of my visits. It was delicious, aromatic with dark-hued and robust flavors and while Paul waxed poetic about the charms of his new cellar toy, his pneumatic press, I kept my face in my glass, taking in the wine's silkiness and velvety character, nodding periodically. But, the dye was cast and once I'd gotten my nose into Paul's Pommard, there was no going back. Paul has had to ante up ever since.

Paul's total production including all his wines is only 3,750 cases a year. The average estate in Burgundy - 50 acres - is so much smaller than in Bordeaux where the average holding is about 230 acres. Paul owns 25 acres. He works hard. And growing Pinot Noir is not easy. The grape is very thin-skinned and prone to rot. Combine that with Burgundy's "northern, cool" climate and it's a nail-biting harvest situation each year -- waiting for the ripeness of the grape against the impending rainstorms of fall.

Also, the flavor complexity of a Burgundy is delicate. That is where Paul's new pneumatic press comes in - it preserves freshness in the crush by treating the grapes much more gently than traditional wine press) . To make exceptional Burgundy you must watch how much material you extract from the grapes and be sane about the amount of oak you use so the wine does not taste disjointed. Paul harvests his land by hand and he does not fine or filter his wine. His reds age for 12-18 months in wood, a third of which are new.

As Matt Kramer says about Pommard in his book, Making Sense of Burgundy: its flavors are deep enough to be shoveled up. Enough said! Cynthia Hurley

To order just hit reply and let me know how many cases. Delivery will be immediate.

The Details:

Paul Garaudet Pommard 2006 6 Bottles $275, 12-bottle case $539.88 ($44.99)

Only 6 cases remain of this excellent and very ready to drink vintage