Thursday night can be classed as the start of the weekend – no?
2014 Bouchard Père et Fils, Meursault
DIAM5-sealed
A young colour. The nose starts with a slightly savoury, almost saline reduction – it’s a baby – with air the aromas go deep with a ripe but still fresh fruit. Vibrantly flavoured wine of beautiful fresh balance and fine texture but there’s concentration here too – the finishing line of flavour is really super – such an engaging pure intensity. Great villages, from a great vintage in equally great, still young, shape…
Rebuy – You bet!
2017 Boursot, Gevrey-Chambertin
This starts with a forward, comfortably textured nose of ripe – but not too ripe – fruit and a creamy vanilla oak – a bit too much of the latter, today at any rate. I only took one glass on the first night – a good decision – the oak is seemingly quite volatile as on day two it has reduced to a faint accent. The wine, like most Côte de Nuits in 2017 is amply concentrated and very forward/attractive. Deliciously layered, pure fruited, easy wine. Very enjoyable indeed but for the sake of my dislike for vanilla, I wouldn’t open another for 2 years.
Rebuy – Maybe
1999 Denis Bachelet, Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles-Vignes
The cork comes out no problem, though sniffing the wet end implies a problem – not TCA, rather with brett, let’s see…
Ouch, that stinks – DNPIM! In the glass as it aerates it smells marginally less bad with time – against my better judgement I take a sip – that’s actually not bad(!) – I can hardly taste the brett. Fresh, nice energy and dimension of flavour – that’s super – but the wine still stinks! If you wait long enough – a minimum of 25-30 minutes – the brett aroma is almost gone and now you have something really very nice. Of course, once you refill the glass, you are back to square-one so will have to wait another 30 minutes – that’s like a dry February!
Rebuy – No
Fortunately, this was my last bottle of a 6-pack; clearly this was no outliner…