Wide, red fruited and floral – you could think a 1990s wine! Supple, almost liquoreux, long a touch of tannin, almost but not quite touched by astringence. Very long. Just delicious and blind you would say needs a couple more years! The way the tannin still shows, I wonder at what age it first became drinkable! An honour to have tasted twice!
Beaune Avaux
2007 Le Moine Lucien Beaune Avaux
The nose starts as pure oak but needs only a handful of minutes to start coming together in the glass, leaving a prominent but quite nice spicy dimension to the red fruit that has now come into frame. Here is an excellent depth of fruit flavour and a very nice intensity too. Clearly there is the carpenter’s hand here, but this is a wine that works very well indeed. The final twist of tannin gives a bitter-chocolate tang to the finish. Very tasty.
2007 Giroud Camille Beaune Avaux
2007 Giroud Camille Beaune Avaux
2008 Colin Bruno Beaune Avaux
1928 Bouchard Père et Fils Beaune Avaux
From a heavy glass bottle that at first glance looks more like a magnum. The label indicates this as a premier cru, though the vintage pre-dates premier cru AOC’s by about seven years – it was labelled after 1935 says my host! Vernal colour, medium at the edge, deep at the core. The nose is hardly older than Le Corton and slowly widens to provide tiny red berry fruit aromas. In the mouth it’s ripe, but not too ripe and very long. Despite the quantity of solid material in the bottles (and some glasses) this vigorous wine still shows a lick of tannin and never faded in the glass over 2 hours. It isn’t magical in terms of complexity – it shows too damn young – rather it’s magical in terms of what it delivers from a a very different world of eighty years ago. Blind you might place this as late 1980’s early 1990’s – that’s clearly magic!