But first, I digress: There’s a lot of rubbish been published over the years about St.Aubin or Auxey-Duresses being the cheap/insider’s/specialist white burgundy wine replacement for the expensive wines of Puligny or Meursault: It is an old chestnut, or fall-back, for people who really didn’t know their burgundies quite as well as they should. I often equated such writing to laziness – in the 1990s anyway, when it was something of a pipe-dream!

Truth be told it used to be a rare vintage that brought the same richness of texture or flavour to these wines of verve. Or, at least that used to be the case, but the run of phenolically ripe vintages – call it climate change if you wish – that we have seen over the last 15 years or-so, has really cemented reality to the previous urban myth that Auxey-Duresses or St.Aubin could be important/correct choices in their own right – with some ‘equivalence’ to Meursault or Puligny. There are even vintages today where St.Romain occupies the old place of St.Aubin – despite the effects of extra altitude. Of-course that means there is ever-more material in the wines of the traditional heartland of white burgundy too, but acid-balance is also a much more important consideration for thos wines today than it was in the 1990s. To-date, ‘too rich’ has hardly been an issue for the wannabees of the Côte de Beaune.

It’s the drinking of a ‘simple’ villages wine, like the one that follows, that causes reflections such as this post! You could call it a sort of – ‘look how far we’ve come!’

2010 JC Boisset, Auxey-Duresses Les Crais
Here is a fine, almost textured nose with cream-edged lemon – oak, but not too much oak – nicely fresh. Very silky, modestly mineral but with a fine intensity of growing flavour – a richness of texture here without any suggestion of heaviness. Lovely silky width in the finish. A long, slightly contemplative, massively satisfying wine – and it seems to be the last of my six-pack. All with ‘normal’ cork seals, and all have been fine. Yum!
Rebuy – Yes