Picture from the organisers.

The official statement from the organisers.

For what it is worth, I think the prices underline the expected quality of what was harvested, but more-so the quantity that was actually harvested, given that 2012’s lowest yields were seen in the Côte de Beaune. Whilst I personally felt Anthony Hanson’s pre-sale hyperbole about 2005 levels of quality too much, here is his post-sale assessment:

“Many records were broken at the 152nd Hospices de Beaune auction. Star cuvées among the red wines included (with average price per barrel and percentage increase compared with 2011): Clos de la Roche, Cuvée Georges Kritter €55,667 (without premium +94.2%) and Mazis-Chambertin, Cuvée Madeleine Collignon at €38,318 (without premium +57.7%). Thanks to a recent generous donation, a new grand cru from the Côte de Nuits was offered for the first time. This was Echézeaux, Cuvée Jean-Luc Bissey, and all six barrels sold for a magnificent €50,000 (hammer price) per barrel, raising €300,000 for the Hospices. The superb quality of the 2012 vintage wines, combined with the reduced quantity and the progression of demand for great burgundy in many countries, not just Asia, contributed to this astonishing, record result.”

…symbolic of femininity and also the transmission of know-how from woman to woman, to design a unique jeroboam wine label as well as a custom made piece of furniture…

Beauty will be in the eye of the beholder!

When I previously reported on the ‘death of Domaine Maume‘, it was based on two news reports and a subsequent conversation I had with Pascal Marchand in Zürich. The reports had never mentioned Bertrand Maume, and actually he was never a subject of my chat with Pascal either – probably driven by me as I assumed Bertrand was now out of the picture – mea-culpa!

I did eventually correct myself once the current situation was confirmed to me by ‘Marchand-Tawse’ – i.e. that Bertrand remains at the domaine and that Pascal is merely delivering the benefit of his long careers in consulting and wine-making – but that correction was rather buried in the comments section of the original post. So what better way to make a correction, than to ask for a nice image of the duo together, and to publish it – so here you go – the image came to me on Monday.

Best wishes to everyone at (still!) Domaine Maume. I can’t wait to taste their first biodynamic (approach not certification) vintage (2012), assuming the mildew allows a few bunches to reach the triage table!

The best commentary on the Rudy K saga yet, fashioned by somebody who was there as a ‘player’.

http://oldvinenotes.com/
[Archived]

French businessman François Pinault just bought 0,417 hectares of Montrachet for 1 million € via @BourgogneLive

— Caroline PARENT GROS (@cparentgros) June 15, 2012

So, following on from yesterday’s news stories, now we know how Etienne de Montille can afford to buy the Château du Puligny-Montrachet 😉 But as far as I know the Château de Puligny-Montrachet actually held 0.0428ha – that only produces a little over 200 bottles per year! – so perhaps Caroline’s decimal point slipped:
http://chateaudepuligny.com/fiche_technique.php?id=15&type=1

So that would make the whole vineyard worth €186.7 million….!

[EDIT] There you go:

Uh oh, expensive typo. It is 1million € for 0,0417 hectares of Montrachet that François Pinault bought from Chateau de Puligny.

— Caroline PARENT GROS (@cparentgros) June 15, 2012