Trip to Burgundy
The Cote d'Or
Tasted Sunday, June 7, 2009 - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 by Paul S with 2,676 views
Introduction
Elsa and I took a trip to Burgundy with William, Josephine, Aunty Siew Mun and Uncle George. Had some fantastic meals and a few superb visits to domaines mostly organised for us by Colette Barbier.
Flight 1 - Dinner at Les Gourmandins, Beaune (2 Notes)
First night's dinner. Great welcome to Burgundy with some excellent well-priced food in the centre of Beaune.
Flight 2 - Domaines Albert / Louis Boillot (12 Notes)
Raymond Boillot, William's friend and contact, of Albert Boillot hosted us for this visit. We did barrel tastings at his cave followed by some at his cousin, Louis Boillot, before tasting older vintages from the bottle.
Flight 3 - Michel Lafarge (6 Notes)
Raymond brought us down to see Michel, who had a lovely cave with some really top quality wines. We had mostly young vintages, which is a pity - I think many of his wines are made in a classic, vin de garde style. They must be lovely to drink with some age on them. The Clos des Chene was the stand-out at this visit.
Flight 4 - Jean-Marc Bouley (5 Notes)
Final stop before lunch. Not bad in terms of quality, and all need some time, but the wines were not my favourite style - rather modern, quite extracted.
Flight 5 - Lunch at Restaurant le Cellier Volnaysien, Volnay (4 Notes)
Lovely lunch with Raymond Boillot, who brought even more bottles of wine down
Flight 6 - Domaine des Lambrays (5 Notes)
Thierry Brouin welcomed as at the domaine. A real charming gentleman, he brought us around his beautiful gardens and to the vineyards before leading us through a tasting of some really good wines, both white and red. The stand-out being a 1982 Clos des Lambrays. Lambrays has always been rated under Clos de Tart and the other Grand Crus, but on the evidence at this tasting, I must say that the quality here is very high indeed. I like the approach too. Very non-interventionist. 55-60 yr old vines, whole cluster fermentation, no cold maceration, free run and press juice used, 50% new oak with medium toast non the Grand Cru and no fining or filtration after.
Flight 7 - Domaine Michel Gros (5 Notes)
Michel Gros was a very educational experience. For all intents and purposes, his style is completely different from Thierry Briuon’s. Grapes 100% de-stemmed, cultured yeasts, heated fermentation at 38 degrees one day after harvest, and a pretty long period in oak from between 30% new oak for the village to 50% on the 1er Crus and 100% on the Clos Vougeot, all with high toast too. I expected coffee, mocha-ish wines, akin to Dominique Laurent. Instead, what we got were very pure expressions of the terroir and vintage with lovely fruit in each wine. Great quality throughout, from the Haut Cotes de Nuits to the Clos des Reas Monopole, all of which showed great typicity. We were guided through the tasting by Juliette Bethery and met Michel shortly after - he is another real gentleman.
Flight 8 - Louis Jadot (17 Notes)
Probably my favourite experience in Burgundy alongside Louis Carillon’s fantastic white wines. We were hosted with great aplomb by Stephane, who generously led us through a whole series of smashing wines both in barrel (where the 2008s had all completed their malo) and in bottle. Great quality here. It is fair to say that every wine was good, and that some were really great. Each of the great Beaune negociants, Bouchard and Faiveley amongst them, seem to have their own style. I would characterise Jadot’s as being very sensitive to the terroir, with great purity of fruit and lovely accesibility. The wines were make deep, well fruited but still restrained wines. They neither had the lean precision of Bouchard nor the edgy Vin de Gard style of Faiveley, yet were immensely pleasurable in their own way. I must add a note on their superb high-tech cellar as well – one of the very nicest that we toured in our trip, with technology being very sensitively harnessed to allow Jacques Lardiere and his team to adjust the treatment for each of the many, many wines they make. They even have their own cooperage!
Flight 10 - Domaine Dujac (9 Notes)
Jacques Seysses, Paris businessman turned winemaker extraordinaire hosted us for this tasting. A lovely guy, with a very wry, Parisian sense of humour and candour which was a breath of fresh air in Burgundy. Much of the winemaking is undertaken with his children now, but the Domaine clearly still bears his marks. Non-intervention really is the pattern here, rather than just being a buzzword. His wife calls it "lazy" winemaking, he says that the genius in the vineyard, which is the star of the show. Case in point, no triage is done, instead all sorting is done on the vine and during the picking. About 70% of the berries are fermented whole bunch depending on the vintage conditions. Only natural yeasts, no cold fermentation, temperature control only when needed, 14-18 days maceration, a very long malolactic. Quite a bit of new oak, 100% for the Grand Crus, 80% for the 1er Cru and 50-60% for the village, but all with a medium-light toast. I really like the style of Dujac's wine. Lots of material, they take quite a lot of bottle age to unfold, then they are full of class - stately, sculpted structures, lots of finesse and elegance, yet with a great depth of concentration and backbone, and always driven by terroir. The 1990 Clos St Denis which we had last was a case in point.
Flight 11 - Domaine Amiot-Servelle (7 Notes)
Clive Coates gave this small Chambolle domaine one star, and the producers that we talked to generally gave favourable comments. Consensus seems to be that they are improving all the time. We were hosted here by Elisabeth and her husband Christian, a conscientious husband and wife team who jointly run the operations. I was not that impressed though. Wines were good, very consistent, lots of charm, but nothing really worth shouting about until you get to the top of the quality pile with the Derriere la Grange and les Amoreuses. Saying that though, we did only taste the 2007s. A better vintage may have shown the domaine in a more favourable light. Wines here are made in a rather ripe style. Berries are harvested ripe. with a short cold maceration and a touch of new oak used depending on the quality of the fruit. Perhaps a domaine to watch for the future.
Flight 12 - Dinner at Ma Cuisine (3 Notes)
We had a very enjoyable dinner with Jean-Pierre Renard and his wife Pat here, with a trio of interesting wines
Flight 13 - Bouchard Pere et Fils (7 Notes)
We had a great tour of the splendid facilities as expected. The ancient cellars had impressive 7m thick walls, with a very, very impressive library of 1000s of old bottles dating back to 1856. Beautiful buildings too, great garden, tremendous sense of history blended with a very modern, commercial set-up right down to tasting room with wine for sale in carts and enomatic machine. What I was not expecting was how much we enjoyed the tasting. Unsually, the reds came before the whites, but the quality for both were uniformly high. Bouchard has really improved by leaps and bounds since Henriot took over, both through major investments in the vineyards as well as in the infrastrcuture. Although each wine expressed the terroir beautifully, the house style was clear to see - lithe, clean, precise and focused, with great attention being paid to purity of flavours and typicity. The focus here also seems to be more on sculpting, poise and elegance than power or density. I really like the style.
Flight 14 - Louis Carillon (8 Notes)
This was probably the single most exciting visit in the trip. I knew nothing about Louis Carillon's wines except they were good (as good as Sauzet but more consistent said one source), rare and very expensive. I knew next to nothing about the Jacques Carillon, the winemaker, except that he spoke no English (a real French peasant said another source), and that we needed to be at his place at 11.15am sharp, because he needed to eat lunch at 12pm, no arguments. We ended up having a great time in the domaine. Boy, was he ever focused to start with, no lengthy introductions, no small talk, just straight into the 2007 wines with a short description of each terroir. Really fast paced too. However, as we warmed up and started chatting in my broken French with some translation from Colette, he got more personable and excited in talking about his wines. Eventually, as the church bells in Puligny struck 12pm, he looked at his watch, and then beckoned us into the cellar to try his 2008 wines, finishing with the Bienvenues Batard Montrachet at around 12.15pm. I must say that this was the single most exciting range of white Burgundies I had ever had the privilege of tasting in one sitting, with the Grand Cru being the very best young white Burgundy I have ever had. There is a magic about Monsieur Carillon's wines. All have lovely richness, great elegance and generally a lovely apple and pear notes with little complex undercurrents running underneath. More importantly, each wine was marked by a tremendously lively nervosity and tension in structure - almost as if the wine was finely balanced on a tightrope, always threatening to fall on either side of balanced, but always coming out poised and tingly. Really remarkable. Every bit as remarkable also is the expression of terroir in his wines. He exploits four 1er Crus in Puligny, all abutting one another. Each vineyard is treated the same way, all wines are made in the same manner, and yet the differences in terroir that stand out are amazing. Peasant he may be, but this man is a genius.
Flight 15 - Tasting lunch with Michel Picard wines at Chateau de Chassagne Montrachet (6 Notes)
We had an unexpectedly excellent lunch here. Fantastic food, with an awesome charcuterie (with just about the best pâté I have ever tried), lovely Bresse chicken with saffron sauce and Thai rice(!) and a brilliant cheese platter with decent citeaux and drop-dead gorgeous aged epoisse and comte. The epoisse had actually shed some of its saltiness with age and took on a beautiful, mild sweetness. Well, enough about lunch. The lovingly restored Chateau itself was very impressive. Older even than Bouchard, dating back almost a thousand years to the 11th Century. Unlike Bouchard though, every thing was spanking new and ultra-modern, with pride of place given to super high-tech temperature controlled fermenters, which has a patented "grid" system which submerges the cap through the fermentation process. Of course, it also allows for cold soaking, and does regular pigeage and remontage automatically. No secret to their method here. Wines are shaped to be early drinking, plush and fruity. In that, they have certainly succeeded, turning out imminently accesible and drinkable wines with little flaws and little character. It is a pity, because they do own some very nice plots and apparently take excellent care of their vines. Overall though, a very nice lunch with some pleasant wines. Not anything I would rush out to buy though.
Closing
We had a good opportunity to sample many 2006, 2007 and 2008 wines (all from the barrel in the later case). So just a closing notes with my thoughts on each vintage.
2006 is shaping up to be a lovely drinking vintage. Nice fleshy red wines, with plenty of fruit. Good consistency across the levels as well. Certainly not the structure and staying power of the great vintages, but they should age effortlessly for 5-10 years at the higher appellation levels. Many of the wines are great charmers already. The whites at their best can be really good, with lots of flesh and sap and fruit shading from the white into the yellow and tropical fruit range. Problem with whites that are not impeccably made would be a lack of acidity to support their girth, leading to some that feel fat and lazy. With the best producers and best plots, some are outstanding.
2007. Burgundy has been blessed with a string of great vintages in the last decade and a half. This is certainly one of the poorer ones. Certainly not disastrous though. With good makers, reds show a great finesse and elegance, making up for lack of depth and concentration with a nice expression of terroir and very good freshness. Whites I think fared much better. Some were astoundingly good, while even those at the mid-level showed nice lines, good focus and plenty of finesse with bright, lively acidity. There is certainly a spot of leanness of fruit when compared to the 2006 and 2008 vintages, but not so bad that 2007 should be classified as a "bad" vintage. Not sure how well it would sell sandwich between two charmers though.
2008. A year that was supposed to be a disaster, and which almost all the winemakers that we visited euphemistically called "difficult". Still though, we were all, vignerons and guests alike, surprised by the quality of the wine in the barrel. I am sure the tastings that have been taking place since malolactic fermentation is slowly being completed all over the Cote d'Or must warm many a vignerons' heart. From what I have tasted, the wines may even turn out better than 2006. Reds have plenty of flesh, with lots of charming fruit, yet with lovely balancing acidity. Again, not the most structured or long-lived, yet with plenty of depth and charm. Imagine a lesser 2002 if you will. Whites were excellent as well, perhaps even better than the reds. Lovely fruit, lovely integrated acidity, good aromatics. I cannot wait to try these when they are bottled.
2006 Domaine G. Roumier / Christophe Roumier Chambolle-Musigny 90 Points
France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Chambolle-Musigny
(6/7/2009)
Pale, pinkish purple colour. Lovely Chambolle nose with lifted accents of fresh-cut flowers, red fruits with ripe cherries at the fore, an earthy undertone and a touch of soy. Quite beautiful and very seductive. Palate was rather simpler though. Sweet red fruit on the attack, very Roumier in style, delicate flowery touches, a bit of heat. Simple, but very charming and lovely in its way, with plenty of delicious freshness for a 2006 as well. The flowers really reasserted themselves at the finish, which had more lip-smacking juiciness together with a hint of umami and herbs. Clean, round and with a lovely integrated sense of balance to the end, this was a very nice village indeed. Paired extremely well with a Magret de Canard in pinot cassis sauce.
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2006 Domaine Tollot-Beaut Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Cru Les Lavières 92 Points
France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Cru
(6/7/2009)
This was excellent. Deep red colour for a pinot. Lovely typicity everywhere else though. Dusty nose with strawberries, violets and chamomile, very perfumed and high-toned, even with a touch of fragrant poutpourri. Very beautiful, perhaps showing some of a feminine winemaker's touch? Much the same on the palate, which was clean and balance, with super-fine, silky tannins that still gave a little grip. Lots of concentration on the fruit, with more dust, dried strawberries, cherries and flowers along with just a tiny hint of smokey minerality and some savoury herbs and spice. Very complex indeed for a 2006 Savigny. The tannins reasserted themselves afresh at the finish, which showed a little bittersweet herbs and a linger of prunes and dried strawberries. Medium-length here, but very nicely rounded. Wonderful thing is that the wine is still very young and can only get better with time. A smashing effort.
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