Community Tasting Note

• chambolle wrote:

  February 23, 2013 - Out of the bottle, the wine is bright gold, rather deeply colored for a wine of this age, but not troublingly so. The nose is an exotic tropical fruit cocktail - there are hints of mango, pineapple, citrus peel, lime. On the palate, the wine is bright, but at the same time it has a sweet, oily edge that verges on unctuous. The finish carries through with this exotic, tropical character, and has an unusual sweet-tart candy character, right down to the chalky quality of that artificial confection. This artificially sweet and tart character becomes increasingly obtrusive as the wine takes in air and warms in the glass. It isn't a wine that makes me want to keep drinking. The first glass is the best there is, and it is downhill from there.
  
  I've been called a "moron" by a certain "rarewineman" for opining that I do not enjoy the 2007 St. Aubin En Remilly bottling from this producer. Maybe I am cognitively challenged, I grant that. However, I do not particularly like this wine either. I find it to be a California chardonnay drinker's idea of white burgundy. It is fat, sweet and cloying to my taste. That said, I can understand the wine's appeal. The wine is undoubtedly rich, and in an odd, almost artificial way (is it acid adjusted?), it does have a bright acidity about it that might pass for "minerality," although this aspect strikes me as poorly integrated with the overall profile of the wine in the mouth and merely contributes to a new world, confected style.
  
  This '08 is certainly far better wine than the '07 En Remilly is at this moment, although I also fear that given another year or two in bottle, the '08 will turn out pretty much the same way - cloying, unduly oxidative (not oxidized, and there is a difference), sweet and leesy, overdone. It simply isn't a wine with a lot of finesse or elegance. It makes me think Kendall-Jackson, or Rombauer, or Sonoma-Cutrer, not St. Aubin or Chassagne or Puligny.
  
  If you like this style, it's not a bad example of it. There is certainly a mouthful of wine here, so if you judge value by horsepower per dollar, it's a "value" and "punches above its weight." But it's not to my taste. It's a Mustang or a Camaro, not a Boxster or an M3. My guess is this wine may have shown very well in barrel and early in its life in bottle. I can't say I like the way it shows four to five years from the harvest.
  
  By way of an addendum: I kept this bottle in a cool place for two days after opening. On day two, the sweet, tropical character of the wine remained, but without the brightness of the first day as a counterpoint. Not particularly palatable. By day three, the wine had lost the tutti frutti tropical character, and had become almost muscadet-like, all sharp edges. I admit complete bafflement as to where this wine may be headed. But so far, it hasn't shown me anything I find especially appealing.

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1 Comment

• essconsults commented:

  9/17/22, 11:14 PM - Interesting note. Gilman gave the ‘14 a 94. At the time I was a subscriber of his, although no more. I bought three bottles on the recommendation, drank two and sold the third. My reaction was identical to yours. The weirdest thing was that Gilman said the fruitiness would recede and more linear minerality would emerge. My experience over 35 plus years with white burgundy was just the opposite. In any case, it’s now the exception rather than the rule, that I find white burgs that have a classic profile.

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