28 November 2010: Ruby-garnet hue. Magnificent bouquet of blueberry, figs, violet, rose, tobacco, leather, chocolate and cedar. Sweet fruit on entry. More liquorice, spices, leather, cedar, eucalyptus and chocolate on the palate. Tannin much softened but still not yet fully integrated, showing some acidity. Balanced and complex. Lacks the concentration and persistence of the wine from this chateau from a great vintage but nonetheless a well-crafted wine with some very attractive and classic elements. Ready to drink now, and for next 6-8 years. Best to decant it for 30 - 45 minutes as the wine gains weight and complexity in the glass.
Robert Parker scored this wine 88. Based on my recent experience of this wine, I would score it 16.5/20 or around 91 using the 100 pointer system.
Sunday, 28 November 2010
White Truffle Dinner - Take 2
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| 2003 Yquem |
For this evening, we did not pair the dishes with Italian wines....instead, we opted for Bordeaux, one white burgundy and one champagne....our wines were:
1997 Haut Brion Blanc: Amber-gold colour. Marmalade, dried apricot, honey, biscuity. Full body and rich. Good acidity. Excellent with the risotto with foie gras. Drinking at peak now, if you like this wine with a fair amount of oxidative character. 16/20
1990 Bonneau du Martray Corton Charlemagne: Peach, melon, nutty, mineral, spicy (ginger, pepper), firm acidity. Fresh, rich, complex. Drinking well now, and for next 10+ years. 18/20
1996 Haut Brion: smokey, tobacco, gravel, mineral, blueberry, blackberry, blackcurrant leaf. Elegant, structured, very fine. Soft tannin. Builds weight and complexity in glass. 18/20
1989 Pichon Baron: herbaceous, bell pepper, mineral, tobacco, blueberry, violet, spicy. Grainy tannin. Silky texture, but a little weak in terms of concentration and depth. 17/20
1989 Palmer: much more elegant, showing character of chocolate, cedar, black fruit, but generally quite reticent for the evening. 17.5/20
2003 Yquem: pale golden colour. Complexity of peach, melon, honey, raisin, dried apricot, orange peel, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, brioche, caramel. Full body, fantastically balanced. Drinking perfectly now, not cloying at all, harmonious and pure. Just perfect. 20/20
Day of Reflection - Day 5 of Visit to Burgundy 2010
21 November 2010: After a fortifying breakfast of scrambled egg and rice pudding, we took to the road and headed for Lyon Airport. Our trips to Burgundy always feel a little too short. I was really sorry not to have time to visit Jean-Philippe Fichet on this trip. Jean-Philippe is our winemaker for our Meursault Les Clous. For me, Jean-Philippe represents a modern force in Burgundy, a generation fending for their existence and working hard to build something of their own. Chapeau! I would have liked to meet more winemakers like Domaine Lejeune, who represented what we found endearing about Burgundy in the first place….the modesty and dedication of the people, the rural charm and rustic quality about the cuisine and the culture.
As we drove towards Lyon, we found ourselves intrigued (and perturbed) by the thought of this land of men and terroirs succumbing to the powerful forces of commercialization, joining the globalization bandwagon. Should we shudder at this thought??
As we drove towards Lyon, we found ourselves intrigued (and perturbed) by the thought of this land of men and terroirs succumbing to the powerful forces of commercialization, joining the globalization bandwagon. Should we shudder at this thought??
Dinner at Lameloise, Chagny - Day 4 of Visit to Burgundy 2010
20 November 2010: What I love most about Lameloise (a hotel and restaurant) may not be its cuisine, but the warmth of the charming dining room, the ambiance, the very personal and professional service of the waiters, many of whom have become very familiar with us over the years, the perfectly-sized bedrooms and bathrooms!
For dinner I just went for a simple green salad, followed by a piece of very fresh turbot, with a sauce vierge and some razor clams. Richard had a langoustine and crab salad, which was not very convincing and a beautifully cooked first service of poulet de bresse. The second service was a rather redundant dish, a little clumsy in the presentation……The best part was actually the amuse bouche of steamed foie gras wrapped with potato slices, served with a rich truffle sauce. It went perfectly well with our half bottle of 2006 Chassagne-Montrachet Les Caillerets Fontaine Gagnard. The 2007 Charmes Chambertin David Duband unfortunately did not live up to the expectation of our sommelier who recommended it to us over our other choices. The wine had a metallic taste to it which only became more prominent with time in the glass. Probably slightly embarrassed, the sommelier offered us a half bottle of 2005 Nuits Saint Georges Les Saint Georges de l’Arlot. Tannin still a little astringent, this showed a modern approachable style wine, with lots of ripe fruit, spicy character, balsamic and wet leaves. Perhaps a little too fruit-forward for me….but nonetheless an improvement on the David Duband. No cheese this time, just two scoops of vanilla ice cream, for Richard!
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| Steamed foie gras wrapped with potato slices, in a rich truffle sauce |
Tasting at Domaine Roulot, Meursault - Day 4 of Visit to Burgundy 2010
20 November 2010: Fuelled by a couple of gougères being served at the Hospices de Beaune, we left Beaune promptly at 11:15 am to head over to Domaine Roulot, where we were again joined by a large group of keen tasters of the domaine’s wines. The 2009 vintage was another success for Jean-Marc, who spoke very good English and was very patient in answering all our questions. He started the harvest on 1st September with the Poruzots vineyard, with Les Luchets being the last to be harvested.
The first 2009 wine we tasted was one of the 4 Climats du Coeur, a Meursault wine assembled from different vineyards and estates. This was a charity group founded by Anne-Claude Leflaive of Domaine Leflaive, Jacques Lardière of Maison Louis Jadot, Véronique Drouhin of Maison Joseph Drouhin, Aubert de Villaine of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Erwan Faiveley of Masion Faiveley, Jeremy Seysses of Domaine Dujac, Jean-Marc Roulot of Domaine Roulot and Louis-Fabrice Latour of Maison Louis Latour, to make use of a portion of the plentiful supply of 2009 vintage in Burgundy to vinify the grapes assembled from different estates and then sell them in cases of 4 magnums of Premier Cru wines to raise money for local charities in Burgundy. The 4 magnums are Gevrey Chambertin, Vosne-Romanée, Meursault and Puligny Montrachet. The Meursault that we tasted was vinified using grapes from Maison Louis Latour, Dom Roulot, Dom des Comtes Lafon, Maison Deux Montille Sœur Frère, Maison Albert Bichot, Maison Bouchard Père et Fils, Maison Olivier Leflaive, Dom Albert Grivault and Dom Bitouzet Prieur. I thought this was a great wine and at EUR 1,000 a case (including VAT), it would make a very meaningful contribution towards some very good causes. For more information, please visit: http://www.climats-du-coeur.com/.
This was followed by the domaine’s Bourgogne Blanc (production of 20,000 bottles), Les Vireuils (nutty, melon, mineral), Mes Chevaux (240 -250 m altitude vineyard), Les Luchets (a lot of minerality), Les Tillets( ripe fruit, very persistent, still very closed), Les Tessons (more flesh and more persistence), and then the 4 Premiers Crus: Bouchères, Poruzots (more weight than the Bouchères), Charmes (nutty, creamy, less concentrated than the best Charmes as his Charmes is from the Charmes Dessous) and finally Perrières (smokey, ripe fruit, lots of minerality, subtle and complex, very refined, only 6 barrels were made for 2009, roughly 1,600 bottles). Jean-Marc said the domaine does not have the best plot for Charmes but certainly the best for Perrières. My favourites amongst the 2009 were Perrières, Les Tessons and Les Luchets.
After the barrel samplet tasting, Jean-Marc very generously took us through some bottled samples of back vintages: 2008 Les Tillets, 2007 Tillets (much more evolved), 07 Luchets (tighter on the palate, more substance in this wine), 2004 Tillets (full body ,very lively acidity – 2004 produced very lively wines according to Jean-Marc), 2003 Meix Chavaux (already a mature style showing nutty, honey, burnt sugar, smoke and ginger), 2002 Perrières and 1996 Tessons (great structure and complexity).
Jean-Marc started working in the domaine in 1989. He said that he had been following organic viticulture practices for 10 years but he had only just passed the first level of certification recently. He is not yet convinced about biodynamic viticulture at this point. He talked a bit about his winemaking and viticulture practices, such as no green harvest, but early and rigorous pruning (including shoot pruning), only bâtonnage for healthy grapes, etc. We even asked him about his activity in the movie industry and he divulged a tiny bit about his latest movie!
A member of the tasting group, Frank, then produced a bottle of 1961 Meursault from the domaine as a present to Jean-Marc. He said it was probably produced by his father, under supervision by his grandfather. Probably a Meix Chavaux, although it was not clear from the label. Frank was generous to share this with all of us. The wine was suddenly shocked into existence, from its deep slumber. After a bit of aeration to shake out the mustiness, it was a richly developed nose of barley sugar, toffee, marmalade, dried figs, dried apricots, marron glace and tobacco. Still well structured and an interesting wine, even if the prominence of acidity was highlighted by the absence of fruit character.
We waited till the rest of the group had left to try the wine from our barrel of Hospices de Beaune Corton Charlemagne, which we entrusted to Domaine Roulot for the élevage et mise en bouteille. Jean-Marc said it had been a very challenging project and he had difficulty balancing the acidity, as the Hospices team picked quite late and the wine did not quite have the right level of acidity that he would have preferred. He also had a few problems with residual sugar! Anyway, we said goodbye to Jean-Marc, assured that our wine is in good hands until it is in bottles!
We got back to Chagny before being blockaded by the marathon organizers. What brave people to go for a 42-km run in this miserable rain and winter chill! Reasonably inspired, Richard and I went on a 2-hour walk to get our appetite up for dinner at Lameloise, my favourite hotel and restaurant in the region.
The first 2009 wine we tasted was one of the 4 Climats du Coeur, a Meursault wine assembled from different vineyards and estates. This was a charity group founded by Anne-Claude Leflaive of Domaine Leflaive, Jacques Lardière of Maison Louis Jadot, Véronique Drouhin of Maison Joseph Drouhin, Aubert de Villaine of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Erwan Faiveley of Masion Faiveley, Jeremy Seysses of Domaine Dujac, Jean-Marc Roulot of Domaine Roulot and Louis-Fabrice Latour of Maison Louis Latour, to make use of a portion of the plentiful supply of 2009 vintage in Burgundy to vinify the grapes assembled from different estates and then sell them in cases of 4 magnums of Premier Cru wines to raise money for local charities in Burgundy. The 4 magnums are Gevrey Chambertin, Vosne-Romanée, Meursault and Puligny Montrachet. The Meursault that we tasted was vinified using grapes from Maison Louis Latour, Dom Roulot, Dom des Comtes Lafon, Maison Deux Montille Sœur Frère, Maison Albert Bichot, Maison Bouchard Père et Fils, Maison Olivier Leflaive, Dom Albert Grivault and Dom Bitouzet Prieur. I thought this was a great wine and at EUR 1,000 a case (including VAT), it would make a very meaningful contribution towards some very good causes. For more information, please visit: http://www.climats-du-coeur.com/.
This was followed by the domaine’s Bourgogne Blanc (production of 20,000 bottles), Les Vireuils (nutty, melon, mineral), Mes Chevaux (240 -250 m altitude vineyard), Les Luchets (a lot of minerality), Les Tillets( ripe fruit, very persistent, still very closed), Les Tessons (more flesh and more persistence), and then the 4 Premiers Crus: Bouchères, Poruzots (more weight than the Bouchères), Charmes (nutty, creamy, less concentrated than the best Charmes as his Charmes is from the Charmes Dessous) and finally Perrières (smokey, ripe fruit, lots of minerality, subtle and complex, very refined, only 6 barrels were made for 2009, roughly 1,600 bottles). Jean-Marc said the domaine does not have the best plot for Charmes but certainly the best for Perrières. My favourites amongst the 2009 were Perrières, Les Tessons and Les Luchets.
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| Jean-Marc Roulot |
Jean-Marc started working in the domaine in 1989. He said that he had been following organic viticulture practices for 10 years but he had only just passed the first level of certification recently. He is not yet convinced about biodynamic viticulture at this point. He talked a bit about his winemaking and viticulture practices, such as no green harvest, but early and rigorous pruning (including shoot pruning), only bâtonnage for healthy grapes, etc. We even asked him about his activity in the movie industry and he divulged a tiny bit about his latest movie!
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| 1961 Meursault Roulot |
We waited till the rest of the group had left to try the wine from our barrel of Hospices de Beaune Corton Charlemagne, which we entrusted to Domaine Roulot for the élevage et mise en bouteille. Jean-Marc said it had been a very challenging project and he had difficulty balancing the acidity, as the Hospices team picked quite late and the wine did not quite have the right level of acidity that he would have preferred. He also had a few problems with residual sugar! Anyway, we said goodbye to Jean-Marc, assured that our wine is in good hands until it is in bottles!
We got back to Chagny before being blockaded by the marathon organizers. What brave people to go for a 42-km run in this miserable rain and winter chill! Reasonably inspired, Richard and I went on a 2-hour walk to get our appetite up for dinner at Lameloise, my favourite hotel and restaurant in the region.
Hospices de Beaune Auction Tasting - Day 4 of Visit to Burgundy 2010
20 November 2010: A drizzly day. We started the morning with tasting of the wines for auction at the Hospices de Beaune. With a pen and the scoring sheet in hand, Richard and I went round the room, tasting the wines, organized into flights of 5. This is the 150th year of the Hospices de Beaune auctions and the organizers even flew to China to introduce to Chinese wine enthusiasts the diversity of the Hospices de Beaune wines. With the publicity it has already attracted, not least attendance by Chinese and French celebrities, one could only predict that the prices would go through the roof! So the tasting might just be as close as we could get to the actual barrels!
A bit of background on the Hospices de Beaune auctions. In 1443, Nicolas Rolin, then chancellor to Philippe Le Bon, the Duke of Burgundy, and his wife Guigone de Salins, set up the Hôtel-Dieu to look after the sick and the poor at a time of great famine and misery. The Hospital was fortunate to receive donations in the form of money, land, buildings and not least of all, vineyards. The first gift in the form of vineyard was donated to the Hospital in 1457 and this was followed by many over the centuries. The wine produced from the vineyards would be sold each year and the proceeds to fund the charitable activities of the Hospices. The sale by auction officially started in 1859. Traditionally, each lot was sold only after two flames (candles) had been extinguished. This tradition is now only applied to limited number of bids in the sale. Firmly established as the most famous charity wine auction in the world, the Hospices de Beaune engaged Christie’s to host the auction from 2005. 2010 marked the 150th auction with a couple of additions: a new cuvée Santenay Cuvée Christine Friedberg and the Corton Charlemagne Cuvée Charlotte Dumay renamed as Cuvée du Roi du Soleil, as a tribute to King Louis XIV.
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| Hospices de Beaune |
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| The tasting room |
A vertical tasting of 15 vintages of Denis Mortet Chambertin - Day 3 of Visit to Burgundy 2010
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| The vertical line-up |
19 November 2010: La grande journée – a vertical tasting of 15 vintages of Denis Mortet Chambertin, from 1985 to 2006! Not a great start for me….my nose was streaming and I was totally overcome with a severe cold. I rushed out to the pharmacy in anticipation of my cold worsening. At least I was able to participate in the tasting, nonetheless in a rather subdued state (so I did consult Richard about his tasting notes!). The domaine has a very small holding of Chambertin, 0.15 hectare and produces 2 -3 barrels of this wine a year….in other words highly sought after. Always a perfectionist, while he spared no effort in making wines that combined power, precision, balance and the ultimate smoothness, he was equally disturbed by the fact that he was unable to win the battle against nature - his wines were becoming much more concentrated than he had liked. He sadly took his own life in January 2006. 2005 was the last vintage he was involved in the making of the wines from his domaine.
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| The lunch spread |
This kind of tasting has become an annual tradition for Richard and me……however we couldn’t have made them happen without the generosity and help of a few people. David Boobyer for helping us transport the wines from our storage in the UK back to their birthplace, Burgundy! Jasper Morris for organizing the actual tasting. Becky and Russell for hosting and putting on a sumptuous lunch for us after the tasting. Also joining us this year were Anthony Hanson, Andrew Caillard and Bobby, his wife, Scott Paul, a winemaker from Oregon, and a couple of friends of Becky’s from Florida.
Russell cooked a delicious pintard au vin, accompanied by asparagus, a carrot and parsnip gratin and brussel sprouts. As Russell is a great cheese aficionado, no repas would be complete without a comprehensive cheese selection and he selected for us the following: le délice de Pommard, brillat savarin au truffe noir, reblochon, vacherin and salers! All very yummy! Thank you, Russell! (And please check out the problem at Abbaye de Cîteaux – such a shame not to be able to have even a morceau of this cheese on this trip!)
Here are my very modest notes on these grand wines from this vertical tasting:
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