Normally I’d give you a quick phone-shot of the bottles, but as you can see today, I had the windows phone ‘smiley’ of death. Nothing comes close to the prettiness of the windows 10 phone interface – but a bit flaky doesn’t quite cover the day to day usage experience. It may have been my fault, perhaps pressing something earlier than I should during today’s ‘upgrade’ – but afterwards the phone was bricked. There’s a tool to revert your phone back to an old version of windows, but in my ‘WiFi challenged’ Beaune apartment, the necessary 1.72 Gb download required the best part of 4 hours to achieve! And naturally, now it’s less pretty, plus all the recent photos were lost – so I offer you the aforementioned windows ‘smiley’ instead.

Fortunately, the wines were good!

2011 Au Pied de Mont Chauve, Puligny-Montrachet 1er Les Demoiselles
A rare bird, and a very pretty one too. Really nicely focused, fresh aromas of lemon, blossom and a suggestion of minerality – this was very inviting. In the mouth there’s really only a suggestion of oak padding and flavour, really this is about a lithe and complex wine with a subtle mineral, salt-encrusted, base of flavour. Really excellent – four of us finished the bottle in 20 minutes – such a shame that there was no more…
Rebuy – Yes

2008 Roty, Gevrey-Chambertin Clos de la Brunelle
Clearly a little ‘old-age’ is setting in; I’ve various bottles of this wine from 06, 07 and 08 – and remember the 08 being lovely when young, the others were harder. So I thought time to try another 06 – as it’s now 10 years old! I was in for a surprise – there was still a hint of oak, but this smelled and tasted delicious – bravo, what an improvement. Sinuous, dark flavour, lost of engaging complexity too – yum! Only when I came to taking the picture of the bottle (which you can’t see!) did I realize that it was the 2008, not the 2006 – oh-well, next time I’ll take my glasses off to inspect the label!
Rebuy – Yes

1995 Daniel Rion, Vosne-Romanée 1er Beaux Monts
A lighter colour than the Roty, also with a warmer, rounder fruit on the nose. Pretty and tasty wine – it has a nice balance and a modest but insinuating complexity on the tongue. Lovely wine, yet, not really better than the excellent, slightly more energetic Roty!
Rebuy – Yes

A couple of delicious, very, very different wines this week:

1992 Comtes Lafon, Monthelie 1er Les Duresses
A mature but warm looking colour. Sweet, plum-style fruit on the nose and a clear attractive maturity. In the mouth this was simply a very charming, sweet-fruited wine. Not super energetic, nor super complex but really wonderfully charming. I have to assume that this is at its peak – but 2 or 3 more bottles lie in the cellar, and I’m in no rush…
Rebuy – Yes

2008 Pascal Marchand, Corton
This was very oaky when young, but to my palate attractively so, rather than garishly or unpleasantly so – of-course that was clearly a matter of taste. Today there is still a hint of coconut, but the oak is significantly less full-power today. In tandem the creamy, luxurious texture has thinned, this wine is a little more sleek and slender but still deliciously transparent and intense. Still a real honey!
Rebuy – Yes