Domaine Dujac dinner at Bouley 3/22/2010

Rosalind Seysses (lovely, charming, elegant) was in town to show the Domaine's 2007 lineup. The dinner was organized through TriBeCa Wine Merchants and held at Bouley on a warm and rainy March evening. It was a great evening, lots of fun and chatter, and best of all the new wines showed really well. My tablemates were a lively bunch, so it was a serious challenge to disengage and write these notes... Thanks guys.

• 2007 Domaine Dujac Morey-Saint-Denis Blanc

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Morey-Saint-Denis

  No formal note written as we were standing up. ~12.5%. Pale straw color. Delicate varietal nose. Precise, balanced palate with nice acid. Excellent apperitif wine.

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• 2006 Domaine Dujac Morey-Saint-Denis 1er Cru Monts-Luisants Blanc

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Morey-Saint-Denis 1er Cru

  >14%! (which Rosalind commented on at some length). Pale straw with a tinge of gold, I think (the lighting was not great for determining color with accuracy). Nose rich with melon and minerals, with an elusive whiff of peach. BIG on palate (relatively speaking), and while the alcohol is noticeable as weight, the excellent acidity carries it pretty darn well. Good length. Stellar with food, which brought out lots of fresh citrus. Nice wine.

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• 2007 Domaine Dujac Morey-Saint-Denis

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Morey-Saint-Denis

  Clear/transparent ruby. Delightful spice on nose, cinnamon bark. Varietally true, very fresh and pretty. Palate also fresh and pretty, primary. Definitely has some tannin framing the package. Strawberry. Will likely age with some surprising grace. Good, but value? [This note applies to all the '07 wines tonight to a certain extent, as far as it speaks of the wine being pretty, fresh, primary, and the like.]

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• 1978 Domaine Dujac Morey-Saint-Denis 1er Cru

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Morey-Saint-Denis 1er Cru

  Beautiful deep, bricking blood. Nose spectacularly deep and beautiful -- huckleberry jam in a leather jar. Beautiful nose, ravishing, arguably the best of the night. Gunpowder, leather, and cherry on the palate. Showing its age, and it needs more air than it is going to get because I think it is a little pissed off at being in the bottle for 30+ years, like any genie would be... Splendid glass of wine. A hint of mint party-crashes the nose, late. Drink it if you have it, but no hurry. (ex Domaine)

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• 2007 Domaine Dujac Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Gruenchers

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru

  Very beautiful, vibrant, bloody ruby. Hugely deep nose of earth, minerals, and primary fruit. Glorious -- perfume and earth. Palate burly! Powerful. Good length. 2nd best of flight.

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• 2007 Domaine Dujac Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Aux Malconsorts

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru

  Very pale relative to the Gruenchers. There is nothing here either on the nose or the palate. Pinot Noir, haha. Blah. Nothing helped, air, food, time, nothing. Very disappointing and slayed by the other two in this flight.

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• 2007 Domaine Dujac Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Beaux Monts

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru

  Even more pale than the Malconsorts. Very pretty perfumed nose, but extremely primary; lovely. Palate is exquisitely balanced, sweet, long, and round with glycerin. Lovely, lovely wine. Breed. By far, the class of the flight.

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• 2007 Domaine Dujac Charmes-Chambertin

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru

  Deep, bloody ruby. Deep, meaty nose, plus roses; like nosing a freshly chopped lamb loin. Big nose, sweet, fleshy. Palate is big, dense; loads of fruit. Excellent vinosity promising development in the cellar; stems in the vat. Long. Very good. A captivating combination of big and subtle. Fat. Fabulous! For me, not the Clos de la Roche, below, but a strong wine. Very good and I am sure was the best of the young wines for many tonight. Best ager of these young wines on the basis of stuffing (as opposed to perfection of balance).

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• 2007 Domaine Dujac Clos de la Roche

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Clos de la Roche Grand Cru

  Perfect, limpid ruby. Nose is instantly inviting, a gentle sigh of spice like grandmother's kitchen. Perfumed and beautiful, but, like all these '07s, not classically big -- just well defined, precise, and pure. Best nose of the flight. Palate is hugely classy, long, glycerin. More spice. This will be simply terrific in ~ 8 years. My young wine of the night.

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• 2007 Domaine Dujac Clos Saint-Denis

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Clos Saint-Denis Grand Cru

  Rosy ruby. Appealing, deepish nose, but the Clos de la Roche easily outclasses it (not everyone agreed with me on this, some felt this was the finer wine). Palate is simpler, with a noticeable brushstroke of caramel which simplifies the flavor profile. Nice, but much the least of the flight. Oak is just noticeable as a wee hint of vanilla (but forgive me on this if it is a misread -- it was the only wine tonight where I detected oak). A late -- but welcome -- herbal note showed up on the nose, a vine nymph winking good night.

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• 1985 Domaine Dujac Clos Saint-Denis

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Clos Saint-Denis Grand Cru

  Bricking blood. A very much alive wine that changed at every sniff, every sip; I could barely set it down. At first whiff, I detected a hit of that rather garish old-bottle earthiness that resembles cork/brett, but it obviously wasn't corked -- just another genie pissed off at being stuck in a bottle for so long. It began to open on the nose; iodine, iron, briny sea-dock. Palate is balanced and round, some rusty gate, sweet, short at first but it grew longer and longer as it stretched its legs and gained confidence. Wow. F'ing beautiful with venison, by god. I wish I had some of this -- if I did, I would slow-ox it for many hours prior to drinking. For me, the class of the night. There were three or four deep sniffs of perfection that will probably linger as my wine moment of the year. (ex Domaine)

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• 1990 Domaine Dujac Charmes-Chambertin

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru

  Opaque blood, some bricking, but very deep color. Big, rich, deeeeeeep nose. Again, as with the '07, tons of meat. Masculine. Nose of the night, ding ding ding. Great. Palate big, tannic, and just not ready; ponderous and foursquare. Overall, not my cup of meat (Quinn the Eskimo, fits perfectly here). To me, the '07 will be a superior Charmes, though probably not so long-lived.

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• 1990 Domaine Dujac Bonnes Mares

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Bonnes Mares Grand Cru

  Deep, perfect blood, edge of brick; again very deeply colored. Nose closed and primary. Palate very, very tight, wow. NOT ready. Acidic, tight palate. Tobacco and tannin. Medium length. The wine has a serious green line running right down the middle -- though I will admit I got no love when I mentioned this out loud. A very challenging wine to taste, in my opinion. Will it ever be ready? (My tablemates were busy having fun and enjoying their wine, at this point, not dissecting it and recording it and all that very important stuff... I hate it when people have fun and enjoy their aged grand cru Burgundies while I am busily showing off with my pen and pad...).

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Recap: a terrific evening and a rare chance to taste a lot of first-rate Burgundies.

The 2007s showed surprisingly well. This was a lineup of precise, fresh wines with just fantastic acidity and cleansing tannins. Certainly they are conservative, but they are also just plain pretty. I think they will improve in the cellar quite gracefully due to fundamental balance. I would imagine new-world reviewers will be largely non-plussed by the transparency of the nose and palate -- there is nothing brooding here, no tar, no plums, etc. -- and the same reviewers will be nothing less than flummoxed by the light color of the wines. These are wines that bloomed with food, and I bet they won't ever really shut down much -- what cards are there to hold, what is there there to win by bluffing?

A Domaine Dujac comment: I have never had a chance to taste so many Dujacs together. My view is that they are conservative Burgundies conceived stylistically as yin to the yang of food (or vice-versa). They are lean, defined, and even a bit athletic -- there was nothing easy, blowsy, louche, or hedonistic here. I called them "intellectual," which is pretty pretentious to say, I admit, but a couple of people agreed with the idea of it.