An interesting couple – and certainly a delicious couple.

2022 Julien Brocard Chablis Boissonneuse
A staple in the Nanson household since the 2017 vintage when, as our house wine, we knocked off at least 3 7-packs (yes, 7-packs !!) over a single summer. This, now one of the first bottled 22s drunk at home – another 7-pack(!) purchase. This Julien Brocard wine is from his orange wax topped biodynamic range, DIAM sealed.
A forward, ripe fruit nose that’s clean in the width and shows plenty of depth. Full and ripe in the mouth too but this is delicious and has just enough tension to keep things moreish! A larger wine than the ‘zing’ of the 2021 but it will become more classic with age – I’m sure – I’m just not sure that any of these will live long enough to test that 🙂
Rebuy – Probably Yes

1999 Guy Castagnier, Clos de la Roche
From a six-pack bought way back – around 2002. After this bottle, just 2 more remain, plus a 1998 but possibly my 1996s and 1997s are all gone…
Ooh – now that’s a nose – this is not far away from being completely ready – of course with absolutely no rush for those who want to chance their arm for another 20 years! A complex nose, inviting with dried leaf complexity and still some fine purity of darker red fruit. It’s lovely on the palate – again dark-red fruit and lovely texture. The, once, direct flavours have now given way to more width over the palate but the lovely finishing flavours are so persistent – but not sufficiently persistent to slow down the drinking of this bottle 🙂 Five years ago (the last bottle that I opened) I thought there might have been a bit of brett but this wine was clean and it was polished off on the night. Lovely!
Rebuy – Yes

I know that I’ve had flu and had to postpone all my Christmas wines – but this wasn’t a Christmas wine, it was a harvest lunch wine – but I caught covid 🙂

I’m starting to sound like a very sickly type – but it was my first covid – that I’m aware of(!) – and my flu was despite my annual flu-jab. I haven’t had flu for at least 20 years, but this year…

Still, my hill repeats whilst jogging were quite quick this afternoon – so things are coming back to normal!

2001 Frederic Esmonin, Chambertin
Bought en-primeur with a number of other wines from this producer.
Hmm – the first aromatic impression is of quite resinous oak – it recalls the Thomas-Moillard RSV of a week ago. Slowly the oak is lost and there are some faintly perfumed florals – but this wine still isn’t going to win many prizes! In the mouth, the wine has good scale but the flavours are a little gentle and loose-knit – very red fruit and the width of deep notes impresses – but the good parts are still below my expectations for the label – oh, and the time I invested cellaring it. The 2001 Bèze, Mazis and Ruchottes from F.Esmonin were all better wines than this Chambertin – but in those days the price for this was a snip – £36 in bond – though, of course, the better wines were even cheaper! Part of the fun is owning a wine since it was released and waiting for the right time to open it. This is not a bad wine – I drank every drop, finishing it on Saturday – and it held up well – but it lacks that extra ‘sparkle’ that I expect from Chambertin.
Rebuy – No

Getting the old taste buds back into action !!

2020 Chablisienne, Chablis 1er Montmains
This was great wine – pre-bottling – I ordered a dozen. After taking delivery, it was obvious from the first bottle I opened that there were pyrazines in here though – shit! This is my first bottle for quite a while – and there are 5 more in the cellar. The nose starts saline and with a fine citrus-backed attack – the small pyrazine notes slowly grow as the wine rises from refrigerator temperature. Super shape in the mouth – structural and with mouth-watering clean energy – but these flavours still have a trace of pyrazine too. A shame, though the insensitive will love this wonderfully classic Chablis!
Rebuy – No

2005 Dubreuil-Fontaine, Volnay
This wine, from the beginning, has only begrudgingly showed it’s worth. The pricing was great and it contains plenty of 1er cru juice – but like some other 2005s – it was closed tight for years. I have the impression that my last bottle (2-3 years ago) was more open than this one! Yet. Day one – stridently intense – this is a hard wine to drink – it’s simply ‘too much!’ On day two, the the nose has relaxed and is inviting the flavours are more accessible too – that’s tasty! Day 3 – the nose is slightly less good but the palate is even better. This is still something of a baby. But I remain highly confident, despite having drunk more than half of the 12-pack by now!
Rebuy – Yes

2014 Henri Gouges, Nuits St.Georges
Ooh – that smells lovely – a very cherry/red berry nose – it doesn’t speak much of Nuits to me but the fruit is really inviting. Direct, fresh – ‘a little classic’ but this is a wine that delivers its flavours with crisp purity and an acid-led juicy finish. I really loved it. Delicious wine.
Rebuy – Yes

Okay, in this instance nearly 25 years of patience for this, the last of the ‘cheap St.Vivants!’

Okay, cheap is certainly relative; this 1999 vintage still cost 80 Swiss Francs a bottle on release – about £40 a bottle at the prevailing exchange rate – I bought a whole case – remember 12-bottle cases? That price was the same as Engel’s Grand Echézeaux and Leroy’s Domaine Savigny 1er Les Narbantons – I bought those on release too, but that latter wine was finished 2 years ago…

This parcel was sold to Wilf Jaeger in 2005 who passed it on via a fermage agreement to Dujac to make the wine. I later heard from more than one source that all was not well between the two parties, so it’s no surprise that Dujac never show the wine – I hope that things are now on a more even keel. I don’t know the current status of this parcel between the parties…

Thomas-Moillard (and sometimes later labelled Domaine Charles Thomas) used ‘rotary fermenters’ during this period – ultra extraction – so it was hardly a surprise when they made hard wines – more of a surprise was that the 1998 and 2000 of this wine were so delicious and at a young age too – maybe they felt that they had to extract more in what they thought was a good vintage!

And, right from the start, what a wine this was – hard as nails! It was still impenetrable at 20 years old so I’m mildly shocked by how it’s now showing!

1999 Thomas-Moillard, Romanée St.Vivant
Lots of colour. A little alcoholic and still with a slug of creamy, almost resinous, aromatic oak – but also a hint of floral perfume too – and that’s new. Mouth-filling, silky, with a certain richness to the texture and depth of flavour – where has this fine texture come from? And come to that, where has the hard personality and tannin gone? It’s still a baby due to the overt concentration and still lacking a little grace, but a wine of (now!) obvious potential. Probably still not ‘ready’ for at least 5 more years but I’ll take today’s ‘drinkable.’ In fact, I’m quite enjoying it, even the second glass (shock) – there’s more than a decent chance for the remaining 4 or 5 bottles…
Rebuy – Maybe