A Tribute to Anne-Claude Leflaive

We gathered at Iggy’s instigation to do a little tribute to Anne-Claude Leflaive after her recent passing. With some generous contributions, we ended up with a fantastic line-up: 10 vintages of Chevalier-Montrachet, spanning the periods where she initially worked with her cousin, Olivier Leflaive (roughly 1990-1994), through the Anne-Claude / Pierre Morey years when the Domaine first went organic, then biodynamic (circa 1997), and right into the mid-2000s. We also ended with a real rarity: a red 2011 Leflaive & Associes Charmes-Chambertin (paired nicely with a 2011 Denis Bachelet Charmes). It was such a privilege to be able to taste through such a wonderful line-up of great, great wines in the company of fellow Burgundy lovers. I think there really was no better way to remember the legacy of Anne-Claude Leflaive’s all-too-short stint in charge of the domaine.

Now, of the wines themselves – to me, Leflaive’s Chevalier-Montrachet is one of the pinnacles of white Burgundy, a marriage of brilliant terroir with brilliant winemaking. Not openly brawny and powerful as a Batard nor as weighty and serious as a Montrachet, these are wines of elegance and grace, with a beguiling balance and clarity that sometimes almost hides the lovely intensity and breadth that the wines inevitably have. There was a clear difference in the wines made during the Olivier Leflaive period - these showed rather warmer, more generous, less stern – delicious in their own way. From the mid-1990s though, the inimitable style of modern-day Domaine Leflaive completely sets in – streaks of gunflint and mineral on the nose; expansive but almost weightless fruit on the palate; all defined by a lovely cut and precision and a supreme sense of grace and effortless elegance. These are, to me, the hallmarks of a great Leflaive Chevalier. Indeed, some of the wines on the night shared so much in common with each other that it was not always easy to set them apart. It was really only in the context of such a tasting of multiple vintages that the shades and nuances and little differences from year-to-year could be appreciated – some were deeper, some lighter, some more flinty, others fruiter. However, each and every one of the wines was stamped with the same lovely hallmarks of effortless intensity and elegant strength.

We had a truly great evening – this was a white wine line-up for the ages; one that will be hard to beat for sure. To top it all off, Iggy’s team outdid themselves with the food on the night. Many of the dishes were great, but when it came to the fish – wow! They really performed magic with the Empurau that we enjoyed courtesy of Nikki. Bravo!

NB: The line-up of wines in each flight was made known to us, but the vintages were jumbled up within the flights so as to give us some “blindness”. I think it helped us to remove any vintage bias as well, so that some of the wines surprised us with their quality. Thanks to Iggy and Ying who arranged the flights in really interesting pairs and quartets.

• 1994 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 94 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  Stunningly young, this was a very impressive wine. It had a reductive matchstick thing going on in the nose at first, but this blew off to reveal sweet, ripe notes of yellow fruit and peach flesh, a little touch of vanilla cream, and then lots of flinty, chalky mineral. A bit lighter and less engaging on the bouquet than some of the wines that followed later in the evening maybe, but still a complex and attractive nose. The palate was really nice too. It seemed rather ageless, showing gently mouthfilling flavours of pineapples and sweet red apples, honeyed nectarines and ripe peaches, along with a little hint of toasted corn that showed up at the edges of the midpalate over time. I would have said that this was a big wine, but while it certainly possessed lovely Grand Cru weight and depth, it actually seemed lighter when put next to some of the bigger boys in later flights. There was also that clear Chevalier elegance and clarity to it that made it seem almost weightless, with well-integrated acidity and deeply embedded mineral and spice notes stretching out into an incredibly long, powerful, yet effortless finish. Depth without heaviness I thought. This is beautiful time to drink the wine – it is lovely and quite at peak. I would think this should be drank sooner rather than later though.

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• 2004 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet Flawed

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  Premoxed unfortunately. This had a very rancio, sherry-like nose, with kumquats and dried limes and some mushroomy notes, and then old Burg smells of caramel and spice and more typically Leflaive mineral notes running behind. A clearly tired bouquet. More’s the pity too, given that the palate still showed some vestiges of the wine’s old strength, The flavours were rather browned and honeyed, with a slaty, sherryish character on the finish, but it was the wine was still clean and clear, showing balance, clarity and depth and a nice, long chalky underlayer. This may have been lovely if not for the oxidation. Sad.

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• 1995 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 95 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  Beautiful. This was quite advanced and felt completely ready for drinking. It had a great nose – earthy, chalky, full of saline minerality, with deep draws of gunflint and seashells alongside warm scents of malt honey and apple flesh. Complex, compelling, with tons going on – I loved the nose. The palate was equally impressive. There was a quiet depth and power here, with absolutely mouth-filling flavours that snuck up on you ever so gently and elegantly, showing white fruit and apples and underlying layers of earth and mineral and chalk and just a little bit of spice unfolding into a tremendously long finish that filled the backpalate with a gently inexorable flood of flavour. This was power and generosity without display or ostentation. For with all the warm depth and lovely breadth the wine had, it was actually its beautiful clarity, elegance and grace that really stood out for me. Incredibly, when placed next to a whole line-up of other Chevalier wines, this seemed relatively less polished then some of the other vintages; but on its own, this was elegance personified. It is a great, great wine, and drinking wonderfully straight out of the bottle. In fact, I would advocate drinking these now – two or three hours later in the evening, it had already begun to slip a little.

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• 1999 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 96 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  An amazing wine, this sure was an attention grabber. It had the most distinctive nose of the evening, practically exploding out of the glass in layer after layer of gunflint and mineral, earth and white meat, apple and pears; all deep, complex, intriguing - a classic Leflaive nose ramped up to ridiculously intense levels. I just could not stop smelling it. The palate shared some of the crazy intensity of the nose as well, but in a rather more subtle way, with the energy and strength of the wine showing more as heartbeat of minerally tension, pulsing through soft, melting, ever so mouthfilling flavours of white fruit and creamy white chocolate notes layered with spice and nuts and a whole river of stony minerality that flowed into a inexorably long finish. Woah – what a rush. This was really something – a wine of amazing strength and intensity yet, as always with a Leflaive, one that was beautiful posied and focused. I thought it may just have lacked some of the thrilling clarity that one or two of the other wines had, but it was still impeccably balanced in every way. Great now, I would happily drink it at the drop of a dime, but I do think it will still benefit from a few years more in the bottle.

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• 1997 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 94 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  This is an example of a wine that suffered from being placed with illustrious company. On its own, it would have been wonderful, every bit the accomplished Chevalier-Montrachet, but on a night like this, I could not help but feel that it paled in comparison to the some of the other absolutely stupendous wines in the line-up. The nose here was perhaps less intense than on most the other vintages, but it had a lovely character to it, with fragrant notes of sweet apples and peaches and flowers, whiffs of earth and a soupcon of spice, all undergirded by gentle but insistent mineral scents. Quite pretty. Again, while the palate showed true Grand Cru breadth and weight, it did not have the same intensity and depth as some of the other wines. It did seem a little clunkier and less effortlessly elegant. But that would be nitpicking. For all that, there was still more than enough here to make it a hedonistically delicious wine, with creamy white fruit and white peach flavours infused with lovely warm spice and nice honeyed glow. This was very nice and complete too, with great balance and poise all the way into a long, warmly generous finish with more notes of honey, spice and a nice long curl of earthy mineral. Yummy. This is quite ready for drinking. If served by itself, it would have been great. On the night, it felt just that little lost in the crowd.

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• 2001 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 95 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  Wow. I had a bottle of this wine last August with the same group of friends. Back then, I found it very good indeed without quite being a truly great wine – it was just a bit on the heavy-footed side for me. This time, my mind was blown. It seemed a different creature entirely – altogether clearer, purer, more transparent; a Chevalier-Montrachet of the very highest order. It certainly had a lighter, more subtle, but still really lovely nose, with a base of chalky aromas framing pure white fruited scents with something floral floating alongside. Attractive, but it was on the palate where the wine really took off though. Of all 10 vintages we had tonight, I thought this was most perfectly representative of the Chevalier terroir – it had a wonderful, wonderful clarity to it, almost completely transparent in its white fruited flavours, with shades of pears and apples showing weight without heaviness, depth and power without effort, all super graceful and sculpted by clean, clear acidity. The balance was just impeccable – this somehow managed to taste incredibly fresh without being bright or strident. It was just an ethereal whole, gliding through the mouth from its white-fruited attack, through the midpalate and into creamy, yet wonderfully clean finish. A beguiling wine. It did not have the palate-staining, minerally intensity of the 1999, the richness the 2002 or the honeyed deliciousness of the 1992, but this was the most elegant of them all. It does need some time though - the midpalate still needs some filling up and the finish needs time to stretch out, but I think all this will come with age. Give it 6-7 more years, and this should be absolutely fantastic. 95+

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• 1990 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 93 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  The first of two wines made during the early years of Anne-Claude Leflaive’s tenure at the helm of the Domaine (the other being the 1992 later in the flight) – this was made in tandem with her cousin, Olivier Leflaive. You could clearly tell the difference between these wines and the ones that spanned the Anne-Claude / Pierre Morey years that followed, when the Domaine moved into organic than biodynamic wine-making in the mid-1990s. These earlier wines seemed rather warmer and broader, richer, but rather less intellectual – perhaps exchanging a bit of the intense drive and precision of the later wines with more deliciousness and generosity. I found them no less enjoyable or engaging though. The 1990 was a delicious wine. It had such a gorgeous nose, very floral and perfumed, with lots of yellow-fruited notes – pineapples, peach, a hint of kumquat, all packed together with little savoury tones of earth, white meat and boiled nuts. A rich, warm, very giving bouquet. Lovely stuff. The palate had a surprising amount of lovely, bright acidity for its vintage, with juicy, lemony streaks running through buttery notes and ripe red apple flavours, all suffused with a warm spiciness that filled the mid and back-palate. Really yummy stuff. While it did not have the same breathtaking dance of intensity and finesse that some of other wines had, there was certainly no lack of clarity and focus here, with the wine being held in lovely balance all the way into a rich, broad finish of honey, nuts and spices. If I could describe this wine in one word, it would be “delicious”. A really nice one, drinking well too.

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• 2000 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 94 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  This was the sleeper of the evening, quietly impressing in the midst of its more showy brethren. I think it suffered in a semi-blind tasting because it was a bit subtler in its qualities. By all accounts though, an absolutely gorgeous wine. It had a lovely nose, a little tight, but showing a complex mélange of white chocolate and white fruit, some floral honey and underlying touches of flinty, smoky mineral and a kiss of roasted hazelnuts. Lovely. The palate was so nicely clean and bright that it appeared to lack some of the depth of the other wines at first taste, but this was very deceptive. There was actually a great reservoir of hidden power here, with a long, slow pull of sweet white fruit and lemon peel sprinkled with a little spice that grew and grew in the mouth, all carried on a river of juicy freshness. This was a wine of energy and focus, with a quiet presence and authority that was so effortless that it was almost easy miss. A lovely long finish then pulled away with a kiss of sweet lemons, fruit peel and a little flush of spice, all perched on a lovely stream of gentle minerality. Gorgeous, and starting to drink really nicely. No harm done giving it a few more years to open up even further though. 94+

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• 1992 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 96 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  A lovely, lovely wine – this was completely en pointe and absolutely delicious - the most enjoyable wine of the night for me, if not necessarily the “best” qualitatively. This was one of the two wines from the Olivier Leflaive period that we had. I had already written-up the differences we found between these and the later Anne-Claude / Pierre Morey wines that in my tasting note on the 1990 Chevlalier-Montrachet. Again though, this seemed to have a different tenor from the more intellectual giants from the mid-1990s and 2000s with their brilliant intensity and effortless elegance – this wine was rather warmer, more generous, a bit friendlier if I could put it that way. There was such a lovely nose here – rich and honeyed, with warm yellow-fruited aromas topped off with dollops of sweet cream and mascarpone, all traced by a little tail of minerally accents. Beautiful stuff. The palate was a nice reflection of the bouquet too. It was full and generous, showing wonderfully yummy flavours of yellow fruit, honey and warm spice, then hints of butterscotch and caramel, all filling the mouth in a deliciously warm and giving embrace, with soft, perfectly integrated acidity forming a nice creamy frame on the midpalate, while also lending the wine a nice sense of clarity and focus. It had a delicious end too, with honey, peach and spice notes mingling in a long, generous finish. A beautiful wine, fill of joie de vivre. This was at peak drinking absolutely perfectly.

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• 2002 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet 94 Points

  France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

  One of the riper, more hedonistic wines, this was a delicious, forward expression of Leflaive’s Chevalier-Montrachet. The nose probably had the most youthful character of all the wines on the night, with rather primary notes of ripe red apples, rich white fruit and some sweet floral notes undercut by a good touch of chalky minerality. The palate echoed the ripe feel on the nose – it was rich, soft and creamy, perhaps lacking a bit of the laser-like precision that both the 2000 and 2001 had in spades. In fact, if this was blind, I might actually have guessed Batard or Bienvenue-Batard instead. This is not to say that this was every flabby or unfocused though – it had all the hallmarks of a classic Leflaive Grand Cru: elegance, grace and balance – it was just that this seemed creamier, riper than on some of the other Chevaliers on the night, with deliciously hedonistic notes of fleshy red apples and the sweetest lemons on the attack and midpalate, and then a lovely lining of mineral and spice leading into a long, creamy finish. While I am quite sure that this was age quite effortlessly for a long time to come, it did strike me as more early-drinking and quite ready to go on the day. A forward and yummy wine. Very, very good indeed.

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• 2011 Leflaive & Associés Charmes-Chambertin 92 Points

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

  An unusual red from Domaine Leflaive’s biodynamic negociant arm. While decently good, this really struggled against the Bachelet’s version that was served alongside. I thought it was not quite fair placing a red wine made by a white wine house against one from what is probably the best Charmes-Chambertin producer of the day! There was absolutely nothing wrong with this though. It had an attractive nose of red-fruited cherries and berries seasoned with toasty notes of coffee grounds, with a dash of exotic spice and some woody herbs at the side. The palate was clean, clear and nicely red-fruited with a pleasant expression of dark cherries along with pretty floral hints, all held in a soft, gentle structure. Actually, this was quite a lovely drink for something so young. The finish was surprisingly long as well, with a nice subtle spiciness coming to the fore. This was enjoyable, but rather simple for a Grand Cru I thought. It has time on its side yet though – it would be interesting to try this 5-6 years down the road. 92+

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• 2011 Domaine Denis Bachelet Charmes-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes 94 Points

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

  Very impressive for a 2011. The rather clearly oaked and more extracted character of the wine may not appeal to everybody, but this was far from modern or spoofy, and I do not think anyone can quarrel with the fact that it is a very special young Charmes-Chambertin indeed. The nose showed rich notes of dark cherries and red cherries, along with woody spice and boiled Chinese herb accents, all topped off with a little touch of oak. I thought it was a pleasant nose, but there was certainly a distinct woody character here that may not to be everyone’s taste. The palate was beyond reproach though. This was classy juice – clean, clear, juicy, with lush layers of dark red fruit showing both good strength and lovely clarity. Still primary of course, but there was a nicely layered feel to the fruit that belied the vintage – a testament, I think, to the quality of the 100-year-old vines Chez Bachelet. Fine tannins then lent a nice sense of structure as the wine moved into a long, deliciously open finish, where sour cherries mingled with slightly woody notes of herb, spice and coffee grounds. That last bit of woodiness might again be a bit distracting for some, but I thought it was okay. Given the lovely depth and balance on this wine and previous experiences with Bachelet’s Gevreys, I am quite sure that most of that will fade behind the better qualities of the wine in time anyway. On the night, this went beautifully with a great dish of duck magret and foie gras risotto. It obviously very young and far from ready though, I think it could well do with another 8-10 years, maybe even longer in the bottle. 94

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• NV Gonzalez-Byass Jerez-Xérès-Sherry Palo Cortado Apostoles 93 Points

  Spain, Andalucía, Jerez-Xérès-Sherry

  A great end to a great night. Sourced from a solera created in 1862 with an average of some 30 years of aging, this was a lovely sherry. Unusual though. After some 10 years of being aged as a Palo Cortado, it is then blended with Pedro Ximenez grapes (making up some 13% of the final cepage) before further aging. Incidentally, I think Gonzalez-Byass might just be about the only house in Jerez that still grows PX grapes in is own vineyards. In the glass, this had the salty, saline nose of a Palo Cortado, with roasted ground-nuts and dried fig peel and just that hint of penicillin going on, but these were met by sweeter PX aromas of dried cherries and raisins, a bit of mahogany and a nice waft of spice. Very nice, and the palate was every bit as good. This was a lovely, complex mouthful, with compellingly rich, off-dry layers of raisins and cherry pips and fruit skins on the attack, leaning out into a drier midpalate and then a finish of great clarity, freshness and balance, where tangy, salty Palo Cortado notes full of preserved fig peel and nutty nuances took to the fore again. I loved that interplay of rich and fresh notes and the way it all came together so that one barely noticed the 20% alcohol on the wine. Good stuff – this went really well with the deliciously unctuous epoisses dish we had to cap the meal off.

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