modest monday drinking…

16.8.2016billn

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Friends ‘came to tea’ and given that it was over 30°C outside, it seemed that cassoulet was the order of the day 🙂

One of the beautiful things about burgundy wine, is that when you line up 2 or 3 bottles, there’s virtually zero chance of anyone else in the world is drinking the same as you – I’m pretty confident that it was the case for these three…

Celine et Laurent Tripoz, Cremant de Bourgogne – Prestige
From magnum – and a heavy one at that! Golden colour. The nose has an impressively concentrated core of ripe fruit – it starts a little in the direction of apricot but slowly seems more like a salt-edged ripe lemon. With the bubbles – modestly fine beaded – this is of-course mouth-filling. Fresh and mouth-watering with an innate sweetness to the ripe fruit but a line of salinity from the mid-palate into the finish. Despite the ripeness this has an engaging fresh vivacity that keeps bringing your lips back to the bottle – Yum!
Rebuy – Yes

2014 Testut, Chablis 1er Les Forêts
High grade packaging here – creamy-white wax-topped – and a wine with elevage in 100% new acacia-wood barrels no-less!
Although I didn’t note it at the domaine, here I do have an oak (acacia!) impression on the nose, but a relatively modest one – overall a wine with a big core of aroma, though just a little tight, reluctantly allowing a little smoky ripe lemon to escape the confines of the glass. Very wide in the mouth with a growing volume of flavour and certainly a wine that gains in intensity. The flavour has the requisite salinity and, if anything, seems constructed like a grand cru – but I’ve been a bad boy and really opened this far too soon. Time in the glass does allow it to relax a little and the texture becomes more and more silky, the wine offering a very nice, glossy citrus flavour. Decant or wait 5 years, but good stuff!
Rebuy – Yes

2012 Comte Liger-Belair, Vosne-Romanée
This is a case of wine that I’m a little disappointed with, and I’m sure that I’m the one to blame – and that’s because I forgot about the case! When I first moved into the apartment in Beaune, I used one bedroom to store a couple of cases of wine – that was okay to start with, because it was winter! After 3 weeks of 35°C+ in 2015 I suddenly remembered the case – the bedroom was 28°C. The case was rescued and has averaged 13-16° since then, but I’ve retained a nagging doubt about every bottle – all have an aroma and flavour note that I’ve never found in another vintage from Louis-Michel. It’s a little like a firework-style reduction – I even had one bottle that was just not good.
This is quite good aromatically and absolutely lovely in the mouth – almost filigree. It’s a thing of beauty but with that modest reductive thing as an ever-present. Maybe it’s just me and they are all like this, but this was a very enjoyable bottle all the same…
Rebuy – Yes

Agree? Disagree? Anything you'd like to add?

There is one response to “modest monday drinking…”

  1. Tom Blach16th August 2016 at 9:59 pmPermalinkReply

    The Tripoz has been rather a revelation, though I’m not sure that I don’t prefer the nature to the prestige-but how great to have a cremant that is more than ordinary!

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