DOMAINE BERTRAND AMBROISE 2010
CÔTE DE NUITS VILLAGES 2010 75cl 18.00 (Swiss francs)
NUITS-SAINT-GEORGES 2010 75cl 29.00
VOSNE-ROMANÉE 2010 75cl 38.00
NUITS-SAINT-GEORGES Les Vaucrains 2010 75cl 46.00
CORTON Le Rognet Grand Cru 2010 75cl 65.00
CORTON Le Rognet Grand Cru 2010 150cl 135.00
CLOS DE VOUGEOT Grand Cru 2010 75cl 79.00
To my Swiss franc eyes, these don’t look like bad prices but I haven’t yet become used to the ‘franc fort’ – I suppose they don’t look so good in GBP/Euro. That said, I’ve never bought the wines…
Comments for this entry
They are very nice people (and nice wines) at Joseph Drouhin, and they are not the only people that do this, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t find it highly annoying. 
The 2010 vintage has produced a total of 1,393,030 hectoliters in (greater) Burgundy (equivalent to 186 million bottles). This is 12.4% below the large 2009 crop and 6.5% below the 5-year average. Apart from 2003 (1.1 million hl), we must go back to 1997 to find a smaller volume (but at the time the vineyard area was ~12% less). The decrease compared to 2009, is particularly marked for red wines (-18.8%) and Crémant de Bourgogne (-13.2%), while the whites lost 8.7%. There was a sharp drop of about 20 to 25% on Villages and Grands Crus of the Côte d’Or (all colors combined) and the red of the Côte Chalonnaise too. The white wines of the Yonne and the Mâconnais were ‘only’ 4-8% down, regional appellations (white and red) 15% down. Interestingly, Hong Kong and China together, are now the 9th largest Burgundy export market by value (€16.5 million) with 1.3 million bottles – it sounds not too much, but it’s grown by nearly 200%!
No, no new grand crus, but maybe there could be some enforced changes in managing them. The owners of the monopoly grands crus such La Romanée, Romanée-Conti, La Tache, Clos de Tart and La Grande Rue, want to ban harvesting machines from grand crus. The proposal was made at the Institute of Appellations (INAO) by Louis-Michel Liger-Belair, president of the Union des Grands Crus, citing the difficulty in sorting grapes harvested this way and possible damage to vines shaken by the machines. In other business the proportion of grapes called “accessories” (Aligoté, Gamay etc.) might decrease from a tolerated 15% to 5%. If I’m honest I don’t really know of anyone who uses harvesting machines in the Côte d’Or – but feel free to send me your lists! I have the impression it might be seen in Chablis…
Domaine Huber-Verdereau of Volnay, has just signed to acquire and operation and vines of the Clos du Colombier in Pommard. Le Clos du Colombier is a Pommard monopoly of 18 ouvrées (or 0.77 hectares). Their first bottles of Clos du Colombier will be available in early 2013. The Huber-Verdereau estate now covers nine hectares of vines in Volnay, Pommard, Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet. The domaine has been certified for organic and biodynamic agriculture since 2005. I’ve no experience of this domaine, but they sound ripe for a visit!
