Sacre-bleu!!! Is nothing sacred? 😉
More grist to the mill…
My phone rang in the office this afternoon. Once the lady accommodated me by agreeing to switch from Swiss-German to ‘High’-German, it transpired that she had 1 remaining bottle (from four) of Dugat-Py’s 2005 Chambertin for sale. ‘As there was such a demand’, would I like to bid for it based on a starting price of 980 Sfr the bottle(?)
In the context of the 2005 market, that is currently an ‘okay’ price, though as we can see from the entry below about 2005 naysayers, who is to say it will remain that way.
I decided to stick with my lonely bottle of his 2004 Chambertin – besides I need food this month…
one must read between the lines. “More red fruit than black” connotes a lighter body, and “lively and dynamic” hints still further at a youthful, bright vintage whose maturity will be rapid and difficult to predict.
I’ve been waiting for you.
John Mariani is the first I’ve seen, but there will be many more. Aside from disagreeing with both of his assertions above, it’s true that there’s a whole boat-load of love missing from the 2005 wines now versus the latter half of last year – even more-so than from barrel tasting. What John is missing (I suspect) are those benchmarks. It’s also time though for me to ween myself from opening these bottles. I did, however, find the Voillot Volnay 1er cru to be similar to John’s reflection of the basic villages (maybe I got there too late), mind-you, I re-bought a number of other Voillots.
As a side-note, Bloomberg has become quite an interesting source of articles in the last months…
The wines of Claude seem to have passed me by; they have a great reputation and they may be far from cheap but they tend to be harder to find than to afford! So here’s a villages at a little under twice the price of the average bottle of villages Gevrey, it’s also my first from Claude!
2005 Claude Dugat, Gevrey-Chambertin
Medium-plus cherry-red colour. Wow, what a nose; a beautiful and rather haunting perfume of hedge-row flowers, elderflower and soft red fruits with a suggestion of oak. A soft entry with understated concentration, velvety tannin and a creamy oak coating to the finishing flavours – it’s also very long for a villages. It’s not perfect though, the flavours have just a little oaky bitterness, but the sour-cherry fruit coupled to wonderful aromatics make this a compelling glass.
Rebuy – Yes – even at the price of some Clos de Vougeot!
Jean Foillard (Morgon, Beaujolais) – I had a bottle from this producer last week, in Brussels at a place called Rince Cochon. Most of the wines there were relatively inexpensive, but are ‘natural’ or to re-phrase, have very few manipulations and often have no sulfur used to preserve them – so do keep them cool! The bottles were all interesting, some with obvious faults such as volatilie acidity, but lots of fun. Just for the record, we drank the 2006 Foillard Morgon Côte du Py – I loved it – it looks rather nice too with those red-waxed closures. They had two magnums in the cellar, and despite the restaurant price of 40 Euros each – I bought both.
Lovely!
PS – The 2005 version from Potel-Aviron was still drinking very, very well on Saturday. I really don’t know how I’m going to stop drinking these, that’s only 6 bottles left now… 🙁
2006 Jean-Marc Boillot, Montagny 1er
Medium-pale yellow. Starts a little spritzy on the nose, but very slowly loses the sherbet note to deliver nice subtle oak and plenty of ripe pear fruit. Good balance with faintly lingering acidity. The flavours are lingering, if just a little saccharin. Always a reasonable value wine.
Rebuy – Maybe
I think that Drouhin-Laroze are the only label you are likely to find for this 1er cru…
2005 Drouhin-Laroze, Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Au Closeau
Medium-plus cherry-red with plenty of purple at the rim. The nose doesn’t have too much depth, but the width is interesting with fresh, precise red cherry/berry notes and an edge of cream. Leave it a couple of hours and you end up with a more classic and forward earthy note edged with cream. Fresh and perfectly balanced with understated but relatively fine tannin. The tannin comes a little more to the fore with time. Not the concentration of many Gevrey 1ers from the vintage, indeed it just seems a little light until you get some 1er cru dimension in the mid-palate and length. Would be a real success in 2004, but in context it’s only almost good in 2005. At any rate it’s interesting, competent, clean and fresh with no overt oak character – it’s also very tasty. At the price I paid (almost 60 Sfr), it’s far from great value though.
Rebuy – Maybe
2006 Niellon, Chassagne-Montrachet
Medium-pale yellow. The nose is a full dose of medium-toast oak and additional quite savoury notes – if you give it a couple of hours there’s a little baked apple fruit. The taste is concentrated and likewise savoury and initially wood-dominated. Decent acidity pushes the length a little further – and it is long. I’d like my glass to show a little more fruit, but this has the potential to be a good Chassagne, just leave it a couple of years.
Rebuy – Maybe
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