A wine! Yes, it’s been over 2 weeks, and I’m still not on perfect form, but good enough to appreciate this one!
2011 Jean Chartron, Puligny-Montrachet
Medium golden-yellow. My nose isn’t 100%, but this seems clean-cut and minerally. In the mouth this is a bit of a joy – particularly if you’ve had a forced abstinence! Acid-led intensity, very good minerality and lovely balance. It seems more about stones than fruit today, and was absolutely relished!
Rebuy – Yes
Of course there’s a big (editor’s) error in the second paragraph, but a good article none-the-less…
(and no, no new wines yet – sinuses remain stubbornly locked…)
Pic. from Patrick Essa. Reds in Meursault yesterday
That’s how the harvest projections are still going. Whites grapes that were anticipated to be cut ~27th have now mainly been put back to the 30th-plus. One vigneron told me that it looks a little like 2008 for the whites, i.e. they may need to wait and wait but then pick very quickly before botrytis exerts any control. I did hear of some pickers who might pick some chardonnay next week – but they will only be able to make cremant I expect, as the grapes are not yet ripe.
As for reds, more and more are expecting their peak picking to be 3rd-10th October – doubtless there will be many domaines on either side of that window…
@billnanson session 2 of our Burgundy course about to get underway and the text books have arrived! http://t.co/MuhAOofb9c
— Uncorked (@Uncorked_Ltd) September 17, 2013
Still no wine notes here for you – I think I need another 3-4 days before my head-cold clears – but there’s plenty of interesting reading out there; roll on the trial in December!
Let’s see, here are the current thoughts of Patrick Essa…
I’m lucky enough to have a nice collection of wines from Domaine René Engel, but I very-much understand Eric’s ‘bittersweet proposition.‘
A picture whose orign I would cite, but it’s been on my hard-drive for so long I can’t remember!
Anyway, p.ox, Aussie-style…
This piece, posted yesterday by Tyler Coleman on Winesearcher is at first glance a ‘holding story’ about p.ox; one that keeps (justifiably) the story in the (wine-)public conscious, and perhaps brings a new angle or two to the story, adding a little red-scare-mongering, but essentially, nothing new.
Nothing new except, perhaps, a fairytale flashback due to a quote from the University of Bordeaux’s Denis Dubourdieu (a.k.a. ‘the Emperor’)
“Vines that are too weak, and with a poor nitrogen intake, produce grapes low in glutathione. Summer drought conditions and/or competition from grass left to grow between the vine rows also worsens this deficit,” he explains.
This statement immediately struck a chord in my mind, being a paraphrasing of the reason that leading scientists (of the day) attributed to the death of vines due to phylloxera – it wasn’t the bug that was directly responsible, phylloxera was only having an effect because the vines were already tired or diseased! I mean, is this the best that we can expect from academics (with strong financial ties!) these days? Of-course Tyler Coleman may be short-changing us, and Prof. Dubourdieu might have full data to back up exactly what age a vine becomes tired, and due to what level of competition from grass, or ‘how much drought’ causes a problem – though, by the way, my 1976 whites are still brilliant, and I’ve never seen a p.oxed 2003 despite plenty of otherwise bizarre ones!
Maybe Denis has a real point somewhere along the line, and can explain why vines are tired today when they weren’t 30 years ago, and why his quote only looks bad because it’s out of context and has been dumbed down… Maybe…
As a scientist, I’m simply taken aback!
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