From the American kennel Club Gazette (no-less!):
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Seals (not the furry kind)
jc boisset screwcap – 2007 marsannay blanc…
Ah, those whacky French, always looking to knock a good idea on the head! I present the 2007 JC Boisset Marsannay Blanc. An unusual wine with a relatively unusual seal – but one that works very well – almost! The problem is, if you buy it in France, they still have to add the tax-paid disc to the top of the capsule – in this case by encasing the screw-cap with clear plastic. It actually takes about 10 times longer to remove the offending plastic, than to open the bottle – silly!
2007 JC Boisset, Marsannay Blanc
Medium yellow. The nose has some very faint bread, a few higher tones and a denser core – perhaps more savoury than fruity. Density, again with a savoury flavour, there’s good acidity yet it seems to stand to the side rather than take command of the core – but there’s also a nice extra creamy flavour in the mid-palate. Quite full, indeed a little dense because the lack of authority from the acidity. Wait 90 minutes and the fruit comes more to the fore and takes on a better focus as the acidity integrates. Plenty of flavour here and eventually balance too – perhaps the screw-cap just needs a bit of aeration. A bit of a bargain.
Rebuy – Yes
the curse of cork…
Whilst I’d be the first to point to the massive improvement – at least in terms of TCA – of decent cork suppliers, the relatively fewer number of spoilt bottles still doesn’t make you feel better when you have a bad one.
2008 Paul Pillot Chassagne-Montrachet 1er La Grande Montagne – cork and contents – evil smelling. For students of such things the mark on the cork was FS…
laurent ponsot’s new ‘plastic corks’…
So here we have (potentially) progress in Côte de Nuits Grand Cru seals – Olivier Leflaive has already used them for a year or two in the Côte de Beaune. I retain that hint of caveat as regards ‘progress’ because there are no 20, 30, 40+ year-old bottles to deliver proof-positive. That said, what we definitely have is no corked or oxidised bottles or otherwise ‘off’ aromas that are derived from the seal, we should also have absolute consistency between bottles – at least ones from the same cellar!
Life is not plain sailing, however, use a standard style (right) corkscrew and the worm finds its way in more easily than with cork – though an extra push (or maybe that should be ‘pull’) of pressure is required to get the seal moving. With the lever corkscrew you probably won’t pierce through the base of the seal either, so you can effectively re-seal the bottle with a minimum of effort – though I found that you need the corkscrew a second time. That was the good part. The bad part is if you mainly use a ‘Screwpull’ – it pierces through the base so won’t get a ‘real’ seal if you re-seal – and that of-course presupposes that you got the seal from the worm of your screwpull – not that easy! The cork ‘spins’ a little when you try to extract too.
I didn’t try an ah-so…!
Anyway, well done Laurent Ponsot for doing everything in his power to deliver his wines in their best condition. Here’s what he thinks of his ‘Ardea’.
