2022 Michel Rebourgeon, Beaune 1er Chuacheaux
Depth of colour. This nose shows scale and an implied silk to it’s subtly spiced red fruit. Concentrated red fruit melts attractively over the palate. The finish goes wide and even more intense. Just a delicious wine, and one with plenty of concentration. Yum !!
Rebuy – Yes

2022 William Kelley, Beaune 1er Les Chouacheux
Airy, a different perfume — but perfume. Fluid but rounder, fuller in the middle flavours, still with a certain perfume and creaminess of barrel — I assume barrel. Super – and completely delicious. Just don’t look at the price !!
Rebuy – Yes (If I can afford it…)

1999 Remoriquet, Vosne-Romanée 1er Au-Dessus des Malconsorts
A cork that narrowly avoids breaking in half.
The nose is forward and deep – a little meaty but with an excellent depth of complex, aged spicy Vosne fruit – that’s a good start. In the mouth it’s clearly no meagre 99 – wide, starting silky and with strength and depth of flavour. Slowly fading with a little licorice. The second glass suggests a subtle band-aid (Brett) so I’m less confident about the day-2 performance – but I needn’t have been! Day two, still a little cold from the fridge, this is all the more incisive and seemingly clean – both the aromas and flavours. There’s certainly some finishing rusticity but not dryness – everybody makes better wines now, but I still love this vintage – fortunately, I don’t think that this is my last one of these…
Rebuy – Yes

2020 Jean-Yves & Annick Sonnery, Clos Baluce
Magnum. Beaujolais from the Pierre’s Dorées
Plenty of colour. The nose already shows a small suggestion of development – but lots of fruit too. In the mouth, easy, very fruity. Wide, mobile flavour – a little juicy at the end too. I’m loving the extra strictness of the Vosne today, but this is also delicious despite its easy style…
Rebuy – Maybe

Also a Google-generated image!

You will have noted over the last months – actually, since the middle of last year – that updates here have been infrequent/sporadic.

My age may have something to do with that – newly 64 🙂 – but it’s also been down to something called PHP !!

PHP is the programming language used by the servers that ‘serve’ you internet pages. This same PHP was in the news in the last couple of weeks as ‘vulnerabilities’ were uncovered by AI (agents?) which brought thousands of sites (mine included) offline for around 24 hours whilst updates against said vulnerabilities were made to servers around the world. That is/was not the only issue with PHP.

The other issue with PHP is that it is constantly updated – so old versions get superseded. This version of Burgundy Report has been online since about 2016 and some parts relied on a now no-longer-supported version of PHP. That’s not a problem for you – but it was a problem for me, as there were particular moments when older versions of this software broke my site.

On an hourly-rate basis, it’s been quite expensive for agencies to modify the site because all the constituent parts are bundled together to serve its pages. For quite a while now, I’ve been out of the loop on how to make fixes.

Since the middle of this year, my posting has been much less, as I’ve been too involved with agencies (instead of content) whose (eventual) response was always that they can’t guarantee a fix unless they build a whole new site for at least 10,000 (choose your currency).

Today I bit the bullet and made the fix myself – well, sort of myself 🙂 I told Claude Code what needed fixing and Claude Code fixed it. It took me (Claude!) a few hours today and everything seems stable – though please let me know if you see any issues. Over the next two weeks, there are a few more tweaks to make to get me ahead of the curve on PHP upgrades, so it’s not all done – but certainly it was a big step today.

So next will be more about wines – without AI 🙂

Image ex Christies…

Now that looks like fun !!

A short and sweet note – quite the opposite of this wine 🙂

2011 Trapet, Chambertin
Here’s a good width of complex, slightly musky aroma. Bright energetic – really complex – lighter style, luncheon Chambertin, but with delicious, attention holding complexity. I love it – and this is very representative of the lighter elegance without losing complexity that good 2011s deliver…
Rebuy – Yes

“I was brought up as an engineer so I like to try to understand things – but with wine I’ve given up!”

I was passing and had the chance to taste some wines from bottle, so…

2023 Chambolle-Musigny
Quite airy and fresh. Scale. Modest structure, but growing and moving with finesse over the palate – faintly grained and saline towards the finish. To keep 5 years, but this is showing well enough to drink today.

2023 Nuits St.Georges Clos des Fourches
Last made in 2008 – made from the young vines in the Clos de la Maréchale.
Subtly spiced both the aroma and flavours – nicely vibrant finishing flavours, hardly more tannin but more in a velvet style.

2023 Nuits St.Georges 1er Clos de la Maréchale
More floral and perfumed. The flavours too, here’s a lovely flavour energy with more bitters. Long, already impressive to drink…

1999 Musigny
This to be released with 24s
Ooh. This is so open, and enveloping, almost seductive. Mouth-filling, still with a structural architecture and with a little more graphite-style impression. Then a flavour that holds and holds – and then holds some more… Maybe it’s time for me to open a 1998 at home? 🙂

There have been a number of acquisitions in 2026 – usually by large groups and for mouth-watering sums of money.

Here is another transaction, but I’m thinking more mouth-watering from the perspective of the wines themselves.

The domaine of Jean-Philippe Fichet is being rolled into the Domaine of Pierre Vincent, and not a lot more than two years after Pierre moved from Domaine Leflaive to establish his own domaine in Auxey-Duresses.

I know that ‘succession’ has pre-occupied much of Jean-Philippe’s thoughts for more than 2 years. His early plan looked positive, but in the end came to nought. It’s fair to say that I think that the years of work that he has invested in his domaine are now in safe hands…

“Taking over Domaine Jean-Philippe Fichet felt like a natural step. I have known Jean-Philippe for a long time and consider him one of the finest winegrowers in Meursault. He is a true “gardener of the vines,” having carried out meticulous, craftsman-like work for decades. When he spoke to me about his retirement and handing over the estate, I didn’t hesitate.”
Pierre Vincent

I will have much to discuss with Pierre when I visit to taste in November, I already know that he will also be taking on Jean-Philippe’s cellars, so will have more cuverie space. Unfortunately, it looks like I won’t be tasting with Jean-Philippe this year…

Here’s the Press Release