2021 Quatre Chemins, Petit Chablis
The second 2021 at home. DIAM-style seal (Trescases)
Plenty of colour. DIAM-style (Trescases!) reduction – so give a little air – or give it a strong shake or two. Fleshy, citrus soon takes over with an aromatic, airy top note. Mouth-filling, with a little more structure than the 21 Brocard PC of a few days ago – more burly – but still of energy and no lack of mineral steel supporting the citrus flavours. Slowly fading in mouth-watering style. That’s very tasty indeed.
Rebuy – Yes

1999 Ghislaine Barthod, Chambolle-Musigny
A sturdy cork that comes out in one – pale as if of the bleached variety – but there’s not much ingress of wine along the length.
Still lots of colour. The nose starts a little tight and suggestive of some brett but grows and grows with air – I have the impression that the brett stays on one level whilst all around engulfs it, making it practically redundant – sweet red fruit and flowers, becoming a proper, cliché, Chambolle. Direct, cool fruit, the texture now of silk, though the very last, chocolatey, flavours with the faintest chalky tannin texture. The bitters at the very end of the finish are merely accents. A wine of width and acid-led freshness like you will have hardly met in the last 10 years – even not in 2021 – but with such impeccable balance. This is the best that this cuvée has tasted since it was a delicious young pup about 18-19 years ago – the 1999s are coming! I’m sure that on day two the brett will be more obvious – so I’ll try not to leave any 😉
Rebuy – Yes

Perhaps it’s because Ghislaine, herself, is so welcoming, or perhaps it’s because the wines that you taste from barrel there are so fruity, floral and delicious, that I think that people often underestimate the wines – or put another way, overestimate their early drinkability! Ghislaine makes wine with steely backbones – I’ve waited a long time for her 1999s to start to show some accessible maturity – I think that they are only now starting to turn the corner!

I seem to have a number of vintages of this cuvée, and particularly in 2011 I was careful only to buy wines with no detectable (to me) pyrazine – it helped that I was triaging the ladybugs myself with this one 😉 It certainly worked out well in this case! I have older vintages 08 and 09 among them – but I thought the rounder, ‘tender,’ 2011 might be the best choice – that worked out too:

2011 Camille Giroud, Corton-Rognets
A great cork – only 1-2 mm of wine ingress along its length. Transparent but still a good depth colour. This nose still swirls with a bit more oak than I would like – smoky-creamy – but the nose seems quite silky and inviting – almost a little saline too – becoming more vibrant with time. Hmm, now that sits very nicely on the palate, silky wine of quite some depth of flavour, the salinity of the nose being even more overt in the middle to finishing flavours. Fading nicely. True to the vintage this is a wine with super finesse though no ‘iron fist.’ I thought of the word ‘graceful’ while drinking but felt that it implied a lack of material – this wine lacks for very little! But there is obviously no rush to drink – I’d wait 3-4 more years to see if the oak fades more – it only seems to be fading glacially though…
Rebuy – Yes

A couple more to add to the wines of the weekend:

2020 Alice & Olivier de Moor, Bourgogne Aligoté
A deep, vibrant nose – classic de Moor. In the mouth too a small bead of CO₂ prickling the tongue and pushing the energy further. Concentrated but almost dynamic flavour. Persistent and delicious. Never cheap but again, classic de Moor.
Rebuy – Yes

2019 Raphael Chopin, Beaujolais Funambule
The no sulfur cuvée of declassified Beaujolais Villages
This is holding up very well – the nose still with fine purity. Deeply flavoured and accommodatingly textured this is in fine shape – pure, sweet and delicious – again – always with fine energy. Yum!
Rebuy – Yes

I think that these wines are pertinent to the doomsday pricing impression left by my most recent post/repost. It’s important for me to to show you that drinking burgundy – and I use the term in its widest geographical sense – is not only about wines that cost hundreds (or much more!) per bottle – it would be so much less interesting if there weren’t wines that everybody could share and enjoy.

So here’s a couple of bottles, that, at retail, probably wouldn’t cost you much more than €25 – I bought them direct from the domaines – as could you, if you had the chance to visit – and they cost me under €25 the pair, no discounts. This, in itself, is a talking-point: If you want quality work, organic and durable – should any wine cost less than €15 a bottle? – I personally think not!

2021 Julien Brocard, Petit Chablis Les Plantes
I bought this and the 21 Chablis Boisonneuse when last there – they didn’t have a lot of 21 left! But readers of my reports will know of my enthusiasm for these biodynamically produced wines.
Open, citrus-fresh and addictively inviting. Mouth-filling with mineral energy, then comes the wave of citrus that widens the palate even as you head into the finish. Juicy, moreish wine – exceptional for the label. Bravo.
Rebuy – Yes

2019 Clos de la Roilette, Fleurie Clos de la Roilette
Dark colour. Aromatically broad but perfumed and fresh. Direct, silky wine but showing some muscle too but there’s a fluidity to these fleshy flavours that keeps me coming back for another sip. Impeccable!
Rebuy – Yes

Normally, here I might offer you some images of my time in Chablis last week – but given the grey, cold and damp – I decided to save the battery on my camera 🙂

1998 Pierre Gelin, Fixin 1er Clos Napoleon
The last bottle of this was pretty good, so: A pale cork but it came out in one with a satisfying pop. Unfortunately, the cork with similar (aural) performance was the d’Angerville 99 Clos des Ducs over Christmas and that was wrecked by TCA. This smelled better than that – but not by much. In this case, it was very bretty – the wine seemed even worse than the cork. My head told me DNPIM – but I did – and I was wrong to do so…
Rebuy – No

2020 Château Thivin, Côte de Brouilly Clos Bertrand
A robust darker, statement cork – all good!
Deeply coloured. Deeply, darkly fruited too. The flavours have width over the plate the texture is silky but here is tons of balanced concentration. Frankly, and as (really!) good as it is, this needs time – right now it’s hard to drink two glasses in a row, such is the richness of the vintage.
Rebuy – Yes

1995 Jean Grivot, Vosne-Romanée Les Bossières
We lost Jean Grivot this week – he was 95 years young. Here’s a wine whose cork snapped in 2 – you know it happens a lot chez-moi – but below the wine was good!
A deep colour though certainly starting to brown at the rim. A full nose, a complex nose – brown sugar, a little balsamic too, spice and perhaps some pine-forest – I could go on! Mouth-filling, still framed with some tannin – growing from the depth – some grain here but there’s nothing astringent. Dark flavours, complex, occasionally almost meaty. Really broad in the middle and finishing flavours – the brown sugar, the tannic grain and that slightly spiced balsamic flavour crowd the finish too. This is still a powerful wine – structurally younger than the flavours that it shares – but wasn’t 1995 always like that? Very drinkable at this stage on it’s journey, despite the large-scale impression that it brings.
Rebuy – Maybe

And one from last week that I didn’t post on:

2020 Richard Rottiers, Moulin à Vent Les Thorins
Just a couple of minutes of air is enough to remove a confused aromatic, replacing it with one of seamless attractive fruit – yes! In the mouth a lower level of concentration vs the Thivin but a wine that’s so much easier to drink because of that. Ultra delicious wine which is already in a really great (drinking) place.
Rebuy – Yes

Next week I start my 3-week tour of Chablis’ 2021 vintage with my first 18 visits. So, it’s time to start my preparation!

2019 Alain Geoffroy, Chablis 1er Beauroy
New label design! Cork sealed.
Plenty of colour. The nose is open with plenty of agrume action – a little pineapple for sure. In the mouth, like the nose, lots of volume – yet – despite lots of agrume energy and a nicely mouth-watering, almost creamy finish – I’m looking for a bit more incisive attack and precision to these flavours – good as they are. The finish is easy, suggesting minerality. A tasty wine that’s very, very easy to drink – I just wish that it was a bit more strict 😉
Rebuy – Maybe

Adequate wines, mainly, I could have chosen better – but the food was lovely… 🙂

Maison Henry, Crémant de Bourgogne
A producer near Chablis
Easy, pure delicious wine – exactly why I asked to buy some – lovely!
Rebuy – Yes

2012 Clotilde Davenne, Chablis 1er Montmains
Screw-cap!
There’s some aromatic development here – but airation cleans this up nicely – a nose of direction and minerality – not particularly of salinity. Direct and mineral in the mouth too – great texture and certainly plenty of concentration. The fruit slowly added some ripeness but this is a wine carved from rock – not the highest of energy but very impressive stuff. The last part of this bottle was even better on day 2 when it progressed from a ‘maybe’ to a ‘yes!’
Rebuy – Yes

1999 Marquis d’Angerville, Volnay 1er Clos des Ducs
This robust cork came out in one piece with a very satisfying ‘pop!’ But the cork didn’t smell very nice – a quick pour into a glass – awful, DNPIM! It was as corked as a very corked thing. Fortunately, I still had half an hour to prepare (temperature and opening) a replacement.
Rebuy – Not corked, obviously

2010 Nicolas Rossignol, Volnay 1er Les Caillerets
As always in this period for Nico – an unbranded cork.
A beautiful colour – not the pitch-dark of recent vintages but also not any over colours of age. A nose of decent width and still primary aromas – a nice invitation. In the mouth, this wine is broad over the palate and oh-so silky – just a beautiful texture. Red fruited but like the nose still a baby – the finish, today, a modest thing. Some fine parts to this wine but one that will be much more interesting in another 5+ years…
Rebuy – Maybe

PX from a 1927 Solera
Just a couple of glasses per year for me of this ‘engine oil’ – so lovely!

2020 Alice & Olivier de Moor, Bourgogne Chitry
Medium lemon-yellow colour. The nose has a hint of yeastiness – common for here and an echo of apple too – but it’s still a fresh nose of citrus energy and very inviting. Really mouth-filling, full of energy and that slightly malic (apple) acidity – but so juicy and so moreish. A mineral clarity to these flavours – absolutely delicious – a wine that drinks far too quickly. It’s also one of the rare 2020s I bought with no green pyrazines at this stage – thank goodness! Delicious stuff!
Rebuy – Yes

1998 Dominique Laurent, Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Clos St.Jacques
The cork is wet with wine through its length – spongy too – but it comes out in one piece and the wine is in good shape.
Not much more than medium colour with plenty of more amber colour at the rim. What was once a hint ashy is now a nose of width and more refinement – there’s still an echo of smokiness about this fruit but it’s very inviting. Broad – there’s really some mouth-filling width to this wine. A couple of mm of cushion to this texture and tannin that’s all but assimilated. Then comes the burst of finishing flavour – for a CSJ this is very powerful so probably not a wine you will finish in one sitting. Just a hint of blood-iron and more than a hint of salinity to this finishing flavour. No shirking violet this wine but it’s a pleasure! Luckily it’s not my last 98 and I may have a few 99s too 😉
Rebuy – Yes