To whet your appetite for lots of imminent 2023 vintage domaine visit reports, here’s a small amuse bouche looking at how the 2024 vintage unfolded, plus a look back at the 2004 vintage – 20 years on – with many bottles opened in the cause.
My first 2023 report will be online in the next 10 days, with a mix of Côte d’Or domaines – red & white – already including my summary of the vintage in this geography.
2019 Raphael Chopin, Beaujolais-Lantignie La Savoye
Dark colour. Dark fruit too but with very nice detail and nothing overdone. Mouth-filling with just enough softness – maybe just a mm or two of padding but here is silky, delicious, wine. Finishing wide over the palate then very slowly fading with a small uptick in intensity and a touch of graphite. Holding well too. Just a super, and still young, wine…
Rebuy – Yes
Triple Richebourg – nearly
First of all, this year has been a little different: For the very first time when tasting wines, when prompted with the thought ‘wait 10 years, better 15…‘ I’ve started calculating my own age in 15 years, and it takes me way past 3 score and ten! So I’ve started (roughly!) estimating how many bottles are in my cellar and even with an assumption that I will still be happily drinking at age 85, it seems that I have to drink 6 bottles every week for more than 20 years. Today I hardly drink 3 – and rarely actually finish any of those 3.
My cellar is intentionally an uncatalogued free-for-all: I love the intention of looking for bottle X but, by chance, first finding bottle Y – and drinking that instead. The Grivot in the image above was already standing in the cellar, waiting for Christmas, but I just happened on these other two when finding last week’s 2001 Bèze…
Just as I was partway through these bottles, I caught sight of note this week on the 99 Richebourg – brutal! So I put it back in the cellar for another 2-3 years – though my better half pointed out that maybe I shouldn’t be making plans for in 5 years(!!) so maybe I’ll open one anyway – as I do have more… 🙂
1974 du Clos Frantin, Richebourg
The domaine named after the parcel which is now called the Clos d’Eugénie – such a loss of history for this domaine. Plenty of black mold under the capsule. I opt for an Ah-So but the first touch of the prongs and the cork drops into the bottle – plop! I revert to a sieve and a carafe!
I didn’t dare properly smell the wine whilst filling the carafe but the colour and clarity were really not bad. Once in the glass – fresh, leafy though direct and a little metallic too – but really no faults – maybe the mold had made enough of a seal to keep the oxygen out !! In the mouth, a narrow, slightly mineral entry but then the wine widened out with good energy and many dimensions of sweet flavour. This was actually very tasty wine – to benchmark, honestly not better than a very good 2010 Chambolle 1er – but you enjoy it more when you take into account that it’s 50 years old and from a far from great vintage. Indeed all told, for the age and vintage this was still a great wine with such caveats in mind. I loved drinking three large glasses too. The tiny balsamic note from the first evening was hardly magnified on the second – not even even a trace of oxidation – given 24 hours in the carafe, and the age, what a robust performance!
Rebuy – No chance!
1985 François Gros, Richebourg
Bottle #79 of 320 – having previously drunk bottle #78 more than 10 years ago. Again with the Ah-So, this time a more robust but shockingly short cork.
Slightly less colour than the ’74. Cleaner smelling and similarly direct in character to the Frantin. A small but sweet start to these flavours and there’s extra structure visible too – but mild vs a 5-year-old villages! The middle flavours are a little more mineral but less ‘growing’ and less delicious too – it’s still very drinkable, but behind the ’74. A slight balsamic character – more than the 74 – but character is still an apt word for this performance. A long way from a great Richebourg – but still with the proper excitement of opening a 40-year-old wine. At roughly 30 years-old bottle 78 showed more oxidation – that’s old short corks for you – but at least this one didn’t fall into the bottle with the slightest touch!! Overall, I gave it to the Clos Frantin by a short head!
Rebuy – No Chance!
View across valley to Marey-les-Fussey from HCDN Au Vallon
Domaine Michel Gros Vendange 2024 – Days 5 & 6, Wednesday 25th & Thursday 26th Sept
A day of more kestrel sightings all through today as in over the vines between Vosne & Nuits as went both to & from the Hautes-Cotes, and in the Hautes-Cotes skies as well, with other birds of prey – the only non kestrels I could identify with confidence being the occasional buzzard.
With the Cote D’Or vines picked in 4 days (recall took 5 last year) from now on it was the Hautes-Cotes all the way. Our route into the Hautes-Cotes was always the same, albeit with a twist today in how we got there over the final kilometres as in not what I was expecting as not the route we’d followed in 2023.
Firstly, the pre-departure ‘routine’ included a less than pleasant ‘episode’. The small in number sub-team I’d been a happy part of from Days 1 – 4, as I’ve mentioned previously used two vehicles, namely the domaine’s large white ageing panel van driven by Louis and one of the two Renault mini-buses the domaine had hired for the vendange from the outset. The latter accommodated 9 folk in 3 rows of seats, being the same 9 of us from the outset – thus routine and order was by now well established. I’d enjoyed a daily front row seat alongside driver Fabian, and AN Other, usually Chrystelle. I’ve described a kerfuffle with the transport from Day 4 when we’d all come together as one large team but that had not directly impacted our van’s happy band. That changed for this morning.
I’d always been amongst the first to the vehicle as I was always keen to stash my bulky knee pads, gloves, camera etc so I wasn’t having to keep hold of all that outside any vehicle in the pre-morning departure gathering. On this morning I came to our Renault to find two young (age 20s I’d guess) female floosies sat in the middle row of seats. These two had only arrived I think yesterday & had certainly not been part of the vendange from the start. Kudos to them for appreciating transport seats would be at a premium but that said I was concerned for my yet to arrive fellow sub team workers, two of whom would be left ‘swinging’. I politely attempted, with language a barrier, to suggest to these two females they were occupying seats of established team/vehicle ‘regulars’ from Day 1. I might as well have been talking to a brick wall as they clearly couldn’t give a wotsit for what I was saying, brushed off my comments, and sat tight. The inevitable happened when the others came to embark. The two to miss out were a sweet mother & daughter local pair who came every day by car. They’d been part of the 2023 team so I guess were year on year regulars.
On Day 1 this year they’d greeted me very warmly seeing me again which was mutually very nice & were also very pleasant each morning with greetings etc. This morning I could tell they were quite shocked, if not a little upset, to be the last two to the vehicle to find their ‘normal’ seats occupied by Mesdame Floosies. Early birds definitely caught the worm(s) here. We departed leaving the mother and daughter, and others unable to find transport, milling around the yard. Am not sure how but eventually everyone seemed to get up into the Hautes-Cotes somehow. Not good, not impacting me personally, but just one of a number of issues through the vendange, the rest of which did (impact me) which I largely haven’t detailed to date but I will in my final piece summarising this harvest ‘experience’ for me and what that all means post 2024.
Our route into the Hautes-Cotes (‘H-C’) is/was always the same in that the first part consisted of cutting across the vines between Vosne and Nuits to the northern edge houses of the latter, then curving right through a residential area of bungalows onto the D25, west beyond the Intermarche, then staying on the D25 Rte de la Serree past Le Gentilhommiere hotel in the valley of the Le Meuzin small river/stream climbing towards the H-C. Arriving at the edge of Meuilley, we turn right onto the D115 Rue de Beaune then previously (as in 2023) travel only a short distance before, multiple times turning off right into the pretty hamlet of Chevrey then into the different Gros H-C plots.
Today, I’d blithely assumed we’d be headed for the largest Gros H-C site, that is the 7ha Fontaine St Martin but, no, our destination to come was actually the 2nd largest site, the attractive hillside Au Vallon. How we got to/entered Au Vallon ‘threw’ me a bit as on this occasion we didn’t turn off the D115 into Chevrey but instead, with Louis’ van leading, stayed on the D115 through wooded areas to its junction with the D8 which we turned right onto. This took us past the Maison Aux Mille Truffes, who’s truffle products I’ve bought in the past for family at home, and into Marey-les-Fussey with its number of vigneron properties e.g Joannet & Thevenot Le Brun to name two. Just through Marey-les-Fussey we turned right onto a vineyard road onto a sweeping descent then climbing slightly came to the bottom hillside edge of Au Vallon.
Quite why we took what appeared to me to be an unnecessarily long way round to get to/enter Au Vallon when last year we came out through woods on to its upper slopes having come through Chevrey I never established but who was I too question !
All Pinot Noir here. Milling around to be directed where to start, and with whom as the high trained vines see workers in pairs, a harvesting machine could be seen in the near distance with its attendant tractors and trailers support. No idea who it was working for but if to hazard a guess I’d say the Nuiton-Beaunoy Co-operative, premises on the southern edge of Beaune. The fruit here in Au Vallon seemed pretty good compared to what we’d seen elsewhere and on the Cote. There wasn’t the quality or volume of 2023 but the incidence of mildew here was much lower. Conversely there seemed a bit more incidence of grey rot than on the Cote but not excessive in context. I can’t now recall whom I was paired working with, having not noted it, but partly recall might have been Guy as owner of Onyx (rather than the other Guy – my room share). The grapes were nicely presented & much easier to pick on the high trained vines than the low trained Cote one’s. Much leaf stripping though was essential. The weather was largely grey and overcast through the day with the odd patches of brief blue sky here and there. We worked steadily through the morning, initially uphill before breaking for lunch back in Vosne. Back again in the afternoon to continue/finish where we’d left off. My sub team group, which had stayed together as one of 4 or 5 small entities within the larger whole, were somehow efficiently ‘flying’ post lunch, completing our allocated rows more quickly than others. We finished earlier than usual around 16.30 and whilst I didn’t appreciate it at the time that was because the Paulee was to occur that evening.
Domaine Michel Gros is strangely odd to me in Paulee terms with that ‘celebratory’ event, curiously perhaps, coming part way through the vendange rather than conventionally at or near the end as always my experience at the other domaines I’ve worked for/at. The reason for this seems (can only be) that the Gros vendange, in football parlance, is a ‘game of two halves’ i.e the first ‘half’ being the Cote D’Or work, the second the Hautes-Cotes. I’d been intrigued in 2023 to note how many of the original starting team regulars worked only the ‘first half’ then disappeared off home thereafter. I gather this has been the case at Gros for a while hence the Paulee taking place when it does to accommodate those ‘part timers’ who will leave. Whatever !
It seemed I was the last person to hear about the pending Paulee, and only did so overhearing a mention of it in the yard on our return from the H-C prior to which I’d been oblivious as in no one had seemingly though to tell me – can only assume word of mouth had occurred elsewhere. I had to ask questions re starting time etc then hurried to get ready, badly in need of a shave after 5/6 days without one. Having got myself ready into suitably smarter clothes, with the rest of our accommodation building curiously quiet cum seemingly deserted, I made my way across the dark yard, rain now falling, through the dining cave, and out into the other yard area outside the cuverie, anticipating/assuming as 2023 that our pre dinner gathering for fizz and canapes would be in the cuverie. Err no ! Whilst the cuverie front was open, it was in complete darkness. Bemused, the location puzzle was solved for me as I turned around to see the new building across the street was open and fully lit, occupied by revellers.
I made my across through puddles from the steadily falling rain to join the gang. Its quite amusing, if not impressive, to see one’s fellow workers in ‘party attire’ after day to day working garb. Michel, moving amongst everybody, serving champagne (didn’t notice or ask which champagne it was), was particularly smart in blue shirt and gilet. Chapeau. One of my serious regrets this year was the minimal interaction I had, or rather didn’t have, with Michel in comparison with 2023. With Pierre largely ‘running the show’ this year, and my sub team/transport arrangements day to day, quite different from last year I didn’t see much of Michel other than at distance in the vines, and close up really only at breakfast.
Reception prelude over we made our collective way into the dining cave, which the senior lady regulars had gone to some trouble to ‘dress’ for the occasion, and in which the tables had been moved to up & down the room lengthways format rather than the usual daily across. I didn’t note the entrée but the main course was a rather enjoyable veal and potatoes. Wine wise the evening was lubricated initially with two whites – these were 1) a Domaine Pradelle 2022 Crozes-Hermitage Blanc (a Marsanne – Roussane blend; and 2) the Domaine’s own Bourgogne Hautes-Cotes de Nuits 2022 Fontaine St-Martin Blanc (Chardonnay). The Pradelle was familiar to me from 2023 as some of you may recall. The owner of Pradelle was at wine school with Michel – they’ve remained long time friends and swap wines with each other. I’m not a huge fan of Rhone Blancs – the Pradelle was fresh & pleasant enough but I’d rather have the FSM. I’d brought a few bottles to Burgundy from the UK as usual, anticipating one or more evening socials with Bill, but as he’d returned to Switzerland said bottles were quasi surplus and, in number, potentially impacting the UK Customs regulations number of bottles I could acquire and take back to the UK, so I opened my sole bottle of Domaine Adhémar et Francis Boudin (Chantemerle) 2019 Chablis 1er cru ‘L’Homme Mort’ & shared this with a few others – was very well received, particularly by Michel and Philippe. The Paulee reds, all from magnums, were the domaine’s NSG 2012 Village, NSG 2011 1er cru, and Vosne 2013 Clos des Reas. The Reas particularly was atypically delish – definitely more than one glass necessary for ‘testing’ purposes ! And post speeches, with midnight having come around, so to bed !
Thursday 26th September
This was a free (post Paulee recovery !) day hence I inadvertently slept in to past 7.00 a.m. tut tut ! With heavy rain anyway working would have been out of the question. Post breakfast I spent the morning, with office lady occupant Sarah’s (such a nice lady) agreement, in the domaine office, using Michel’s desk working on ‘Bill stuff’, largely downloaded photos, re-sizing the same for email transmission, and captioning. Towards the end of the morning I took myself off to Beaune on an errand for a friend to collect a specific bottle, already ordered and paid for from the UK. Arriving at the Beaune merchant location (Vistavin – on an industrial park on southern edge of Beaune) it was just turned lunch hour so, knowing how the French love the lunch period, and with the business clearly not open, I initially chose to park up and kill time. That dragged so I decided to leave to get some petrol and come back – which I did. Subsequently a bit of a pantomime ensued with access to the business, a couple of phone calls being required, then a short trip to another close by associated wine business to finally obtain the bottle – phew !
Back to Vosne for more office work to while away the afternoon. Plenty of folk had clearly departed, including my room sharer, Guy, but bless him he’d left me a note with 3 cans of beer. Two other guys who’d been sharing the room next to us on our landing had also gone so I was alone – but that was good as it meant, with no others to consider, when I was in my room I could bolt the landing door outside my room to the stairs and so ensure no nonsense of Belgians etc trying to annoy me, leave furniture piled up outside my room door, or enter the room to misbehave with my luggage, possessions etc etc – all of which had already occurred. Not sure if dinner was on offer on this non- working day (don’t believe it was) I was content to enjoy bread & cheese in my room with wine leftovers and beers pre bed, now safe my beauty sleep couldn’t be spoilt by nonsense with the landing door bolted, ahead of Friday’s return to the H-C with influx of new faces & an improved transport situation.
MdMdlV
2024 Beaujolais Nouveau Cuvée Novalis
This is my local (Swiss) Coop’s wine. As always, producer details are opaque – ‘Coop Bâle’ are the only details – except that the wine originates from Beaujolais! Some years this is to protect the obviously guilty – as the wine can be so bad – but this year, it’s a pleasant surprise – particularly given the variability of the 20024 primeurs. I do ask myself who makes any money here – this, 2 weeks after Nouveau Day costs only 4.75 Swiss franc with its 20% discount. Screw-cap.
Modest colour. The nose needs a couple of swirls but quickly offers an open, clean, quite bubble-gum aromatic – it’s not bad. Decent width of fresh flavour and a properly juicy, almost creamy depth of very tasty flavour – I took a second glass. The tannin is ultra-fine with just a faint initial dryness but afterwards I didn’t really notice. For the price it’s excellent – and I can’t say that every year about the Coop’s wine…
Rebuy – Why not!
2009 Gilles Bouton, Chassagne-Montrachet Les Voillenots Dessous
This was far from my favourite vintage on release – it seemed just too ripe – little did I know that this would be the template for just about every vintage post (and including) 2015!
Neither a deep colour, nor an obviously ripe nose – in fact this nose starts a little meagre. The palate too – there’s decent scale but a herby complexity and an obvious structure – the the finish is quite good. This is a wine that still needs some aging because on day 2 it was more acceptably softer and accommodating in flavour – it was quite good. At this stage not good enough to make a special search to buy – but a serviceable bottle. Probably much more approachable in 4-5 years…
Rebuy – No
2001 Frédéric Esmonin, Chambertin Clos de Bèze
2002 is a more consistent vintage than 2001 – but most of the best wines come from 2001 – there I said it!! I break far too many corks in bottles that are pre-2010 so I went straight for the Ah-So – so no problems.
More than medium colour but clearly a colour with some maturity. Ooh! That’s deep – and it’s inviting too – a silky depth of macerating red fruit and darker cherries – far from tertiary. Mouth-filling and silky too. Here is energy and complexity – some last vestiges of creamy oak but only as part of a large scale of complexity. Still some small finishing bitters too – but already quite silken. The finish haunting. More sensual than ‘grand’ as the structure is so hidden – but sensual works for me too*
Rebuy – Yes
Ah the weather !!
Just to add a little to this year’s precipitation figures, the snow arrived in Burgundy on Thursday. One of the first frosty mornings gave way to snowflakes starting to fall around 10h30 and quickly filling the rows between the vines – of course, it’s picturesque!
Only by chance did I consult Google on Friday – before leaving for home – and what luck that I did !! Here I found that my normal route home was closed, adding 7 hours additional journey time if I hadn’t been forewarned. So my Plan B route took me over the Jura – not quickly – as you can see above but the roads were always open and flowing. This added only 20 minutes to my usual journey time – what a lucky boy!
I left home on Sunday evening with 2°C, returning to 15°C at 8pm in Beaune – and all the snow was long gone – unlike at home. But the weekend had fortified me with:
2021 Château Thivin, Cote de Brouilly La Chapelle
Not my best buying choice – a wine still riddled with pyrazine aromas and flavours – but seemingly the least pyrazined of their range in this vintage. It’s not improved over the time in my cellar…
Rebuy – No
2018 Laurent Tribut, Chablis 1er Montmains
Well, there’s no doubting that this is from Chablis – incisive and mineral – nicely textured too. There a depth of riper, almost honied, flavour which has developed and this isn’t my favourite flavour profile – but a wine I can still drink with plenty of pleasure.
Rebuy – No
2005 AF Gros, Vosne-Romanée Clos de la Fontaine
Still deeply coloured and darkly aromatic – it’s still retaining some smokiness from the oak of it’s youth. Part the wine and part the elevage (probably) there’s plenty of spice in both the aromas and flavours. A wine of scale and still a baby – but now it’s an open one. Nearly 20 years old and probably not at its best for at least another 4 or 5 years – but a wine you can probably depend on for another 20 years…
Rebuy – Yes
Right: Grassl & Sydonios (or Sy)
Last week whilst tasting some very nice Clos de Tart, winemaker Alessandro Noli asked me if I’d like to compare two different glasses. I was up for that – it also turned out to be a fascinating experience!!
Our tasting used the ‘traditional’ Sydonios Esthète glass as in multiple previous tastings here. But for a couple of wines, we compared our first impressions, made with that smaller Sy, with the larger bowled Grassl offering – and my takeaways were:
Wine #1 now with the Grassl
Of course, a larger nose now fills this larger bowl – but the effect is more airy and it’s also less easy to find the precisions. The wine on the palate seems more direct and fluid – the tannin softer/less evident – still great but it doesn’t really seem like the same wine – hardly!
Wine #2 now with the Grassl
A less concentrated but larger nose – here some spiciness not seen in the small glass. Supple, almost fluid again – a wine that melts more over the palate – I think more accessible too, and again partly due to more softness to the tannic structure. And, yes, a similar finishing shape, intensity and flavour to the smaller glass – except that the amplitude seems dialled down, it’s less intense but still ultra-long. Dumbed down? That would be unfair – but made a little easier!
If you have to make a choice – large-scale, important reds will seem more accessible as the texture of the tannin seems silkier – so maybe good for the table. Personally, I preferred the more visceral, full-volume performance of the smaller bowled Sydonios. The wine when served in this glass will be, for sure, stricter. But you know that I like strict 😉
Anyway, I want full volume when I’m tasting wines…
Sunday, November 17th saw the 164th edition of the Hospices de Beaune wine sale – the oldest charity wine auction – again under the auspices of Sotheby’s plus a cadre of national and international actors as cheerleaders for the sale. It delivered an overall total of €14.4m which includes the €460,000 raised by the ‘President’s Barrel’, this is the only lot in the sale that excludes a buyer’s premium fees. When including buyers’ fees, the total was €15.2 million.
Without looking into the details of the sale, the total amount achieved by the sale was much lower than other previous vintages. It is, however, important to note that this was due to the challenges of the vintage producing one of the smallest crops in recent years – only 2021 was lower, see the table to compare below – just 449 barrels being offered in the sale. The average price of the reds did fall by around 5% but the price of the whites increased by 8%. This resulted in the 3rd highest average barrel price.
2024 Pièce des Présidents
The record price for a ‘Presidents’ Barrel’ was set in 2022 at €810,000, for a barrel of Corton Grand Cru. In 2023, the ‘Presidents’ Barrel’ – a Mazis-Chambertin Grand Cru – sold for €350,000. This year the barrel contained a 2024 Beaune 1er Les Bressandes – and didn’t it do well – €360,000 plus a further donation from another bidder of €100,000 to support the twin charities* that were championed by its sale. This taking the final result to €460,000 !!
*Médecins Sans Frontières and the Global Gift Foundation
The hammer total for the 164th Hospices de Beaune wine sale was €14,404,200 including the Pièce des Présidents. So how does this sale compare? Since the vintage 2021, the totals (Sotheby’s) also include the President’s barrel – the earlier years’ values (Christie’s) are stated without including the President’s barrel. All the figures are ‘net,’ so without the respective auctioneers’ commissions.
| Vintage | Sale Total € millions | Price per barrel | Number of barrels |
| 2005 | €3.79 million | €4,803 | 789 |
| 2009 | €4.99 million | €6,250 | 799 |
| 2015 | €11.3 million | €18,880 | 575 |
| 2016 | €8.4 million | €13,833 | 596 |
| 2017 | €13.5 million | €16,657 | 787 |
| 2018 | €13.95 million | €16,850 | 828 |
| 2019 | €12.28 million | €21,823 | 589 |
| 2020 | €12.76 million | €21,677 | 630 |
| 2021 | €11.68 million | €33,223 | 352 |
| 2022 | €29.79 million | €35,974 | 802 |
| 2023 | €23.28 million | €30,233 | 770 |
| 2024 | €14.404 million | €32,080 | 449* |
*The 449 lots on offer comprised 441 barrels of red and white wines, 1 Presidents’ Barrel, and 7 barrels of spirits.
Domaine Michel Gros Vendange 2024 – Day 4, Tuesday 24th Sept
All the usual suspects at breakfast this day; older individuals, mostly longtime regulars, and including Philippe Durand – probably my favourite colleague along with Acho’s Italian owner. Philippe is an older guy family man from Belfort & I believe has, or had, a senior position with his local Sapeur Pompiers. For me he’s immensely likeable. His vendange role is as one of the principal tractor drivers. He’s always immaculately and neatly turned out & neat in everything he does, including eating his breakfast for which he has a very smart folding Laguiole knife to trim his fruit. Philippe is also my ‘weather man’ & today, first thing over breakfast was adamant in response to my enquiry that there’d be no rain today.
Our initial destination on this grey, overcast morning was a similar surprise as yesterday when we’d returned to Morey En la Rude de Vergy which I’d thought we’d finished the day before. Today, with a personal sinking feeling, having been glad to exit yesterday, we went back to the plateau of Boncourt (le Bois) beyond the railway line for more Bourgogne Rouge fruit. After the quasi horror show, largely waste of time/effort of yesterday, to day was rather better & ‘more like it’; if the grapes weren’t ‘great’ at least there were some. Our work here took us to mid-morning but, you guessed it, despite Philippe’s confident over breakfast weather assertion, as neared the end of our session we were lightly showered/rained on – and guess who had no rain jacket or hat ?
Our next destination was familiar from 2023 but w. hat wasn’t ‘familiar’ was our route to it and for quite a while I was baffled where we might be headed for. Our Renault minibus, chauffer Fabian, followed sub team leader Louis in the domaine’s large white ancient panel van. Louis took THE most circuitous route one could imagine to, ultimately, the south side of Nuits-St-Georges. Initially he headed east away from Boncourt & Vosne on the D109G which led us past the Aerodrome de Nuits-St-Georges with a couple of light aircraft and a helicopter on the apron, then turning on to the D116 into the eastern suburbs of NSG, briefly onto the D8 main road as leads to the Autoroute or into NSG Centre, then weaving through what seemed backstreets, past the Gare (Railway Station) de NSG, and ultimately onto the D35 to its junction with the D(RN)974, just south of the ibis NSG Hotel. Bizarre ! I’m guessing Louis was seeking to avoid the main road through NSG and its, to me, infamous traffic light controlled junction on the north side where the Moillard premises are. So convoluted was Louis’ route, albeit impressive in terms of local knowledge/geography, that for a time I was wondering if he was seeking to ‘kill’ time ! We were headed for the Gros plot of village NSG Les Chaliots as borders the D974 & has NSG 1er cru ‘Les Poirets’ above it. This plot is the only one south of NSG owned by the domaine. Its notable for being crossed by electricity lines and a large pylon. We parked on the roadside verge, starting our picking from there, which occasioned Onyx’s owner keeping him on his chain whilst himself working to avoid any road related harm coming to our furry friend (Acho and his owner had remained at the domaine today with a few others as on triage table duty). We made 2-3 passes here, meeting the rest of the team for the first time this week, who were working downwards, circa half way up the rows of our second pass. We finished here in time for an early lunch, it not being worth starting anything/anywhere else. Lunch was notably good as entrée of couscous with vegetables in a tomato sauce, followed by nice pieces of salmon with pasta.
For the afternoon the whole team went to the domaine’s two adjacent NSG high, top of the slope, village crus once a transport problem I’d sort of seen coming had been resolved – somehow ! From day one there had been only two hired Renault Minibuses which, for me on first sight, clearly weren’t going to be enough. Our sub-team had been exclusively using one so I’m not sure how the rest of the main team had been getting about other than walking to the Vosne plots as had been the case in 2023. Seemed a logistical shortcoming, unless deliberate, to only have the two vehicles to supplement the various domaine vehicles. The adjacent plots, separated by a narrow grassy vertical path, had puzzled me in terms of identity in 2023 when Michel (Gros) had clarified matters for me. Just north of NSG, at altitude, such that views south over NSG town, and north towards Vosne are quite something, right at the top of the slope before one gets into scrub of grass and shrubs, we worked a part of Aux Champs Perdrix and then En la Perriere Noblot. Fruit from these sites is blend with that of ‘Aux Athees’ (by the Intermarche), Les Lavieres, and ‘Au Bas de Combe’ for the domaine’s NSG Village. We worked 3 uphill passes of long rows as, with a couple of rest breaks, took us through the afternoon to just after 17.00 hrs. Re-joining with the rest of the team though had one major negative after the relative freedom, peace and camaraderie of our small sub-team as we had joyously been spared the nonsense and stupidity of the Belgian youth scumbag yobs which this afternoon had manifested itself again in their attempts to dump buckets of crap over one of their own number or some other targetted unfortunate. Fortunately, I was always far enough away but, whilst never struck, I did ‘suffer’ with others, the odd bunch of green or other grapes whistling through the air close by directed at one’s person. The nearest one such bunch came to me was a couple of feet away into the leaves of a nearby vine as their aims were well off & the throws being at some distance away. Utter nonsense as could have caused damage/injury to anyone unfortunate to be hit. Absolutely not needed. Hey ho.
Back to base, shower, laptop photo work, dinner & bed. The above was the end of our Cote de Nuits activities, Day 5 Wednesday seeing our first trip to the Hautes-Cotes and that evening the domaine’s vendange Paulee. As I know my enthusiasm for the Hautes-Cotes isn’t, it seems, widely shared I’m minded to condense all our remaining days into my next instalment – but will see when commencing that !
MdMdLV
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