I know that I’ve had flu and had to postpone all my Christmas wines – but this wasn’t a Christmas wine, it was a harvest lunch wine – but I caught covid 🙂

I’m starting to sound like a very sickly type – but it was my first covid – that I’m aware of(!) – and my flu was despite my annual flu-jab. I haven’t had flu for at least 20 years, but this year…

Still, my hill repeats whilst jogging were quite quick this afternoon – so things are coming back to normal!

2001 Frederic Esmonin, Chambertin
Bought en-primeur with a number of other wines from this producer.
Hmm – the first aromatic impression is of quite resinous oak – it recalls the Thomas-Moillard RSV of a week ago. Slowly the oak is lost and there are some faintly perfumed florals – but this wine still isn’t going to win many prizes! In the mouth, the wine has good scale but the flavours are a little gentle and loose-knit – very red fruit and the width of deep notes impresses – but the good parts are still below my expectations for the label – oh, and the time I invested cellaring it. The 2001 Bèze, Mazis and Ruchottes from F.Esmonin were all better wines than this Chambertin – but in those days the price for this was a snip – £36 in bond – though, of course, the better wines were even cheaper! Part of the fun is owning a wine since it was released and waiting for the right time to open it. This is not a bad wine – I drank every drop, finishing it on Saturday – and it held up well – but it lacks that extra ‘sparkle’ that I expect from Chambertin.
Rebuy – No

Getting the old taste buds back into action !!

2020 Chablisienne, Chablis 1er Montmains
This was great wine – pre-bottling – I ordered a dozen. After taking delivery, it was obvious from the first bottle I opened that there were pyrazines in here though – shit! This is my first bottle for quite a while – and there are 5 more in the cellar. The nose starts saline and with a fine citrus-backed attack – the small pyrazine notes slowly grow as the wine rises from refrigerator temperature. Super shape in the mouth – structural and with mouth-watering clean energy – but these flavours still have a trace of pyrazine too. A shame, though the insensitive will love this wonderfully classic Chablis!
Rebuy – No

2005 Dubreuil-Fontaine, Volnay
This wine, from the beginning, has only begrudgingly showed it’s worth. The pricing was great and it contains plenty of 1er cru juice – but like some other 2005s – it was closed tight for years. I have the impression that my last bottle (2-3 years ago) was more open than this one! Yet. Day one – stridently intense – this is a hard wine to drink – it’s simply ‘too much!’ On day two, the the nose has relaxed and is inviting the flavours are more accessible too – that’s tasty! Day 3 – the nose is slightly less good but the palate is even better. This is still something of a baby. But I remain highly confident, despite having drunk more than half of the 12-pack by now!
Rebuy – Yes

2014 Henri Gouges, Nuits St.Georges
Ooh – that smells lovely – a very cherry/red berry nose – it doesn’t speak much of Nuits to me but the fruit is really inviting. Direct, fresh – ‘a little classic’ but this is a wine that delivers its flavours with crisp purity and an acid-led juicy finish. I really loved it. Delicious wine.
Rebuy – Yes

Okay, in this instance nearly 25 years of patience for this, the last of the ‘cheap St.Vivants!’

Okay, cheap is certainly relative; this 1999 vintage still cost 80 Swiss Francs a bottle on release – about £40 a bottle at the prevailing exchange rate – I bought a whole case – remember 12-bottle cases? That price was the same as Engel’s Grand Echézeaux and Leroy’s Domaine Savigny 1er Les Narbantons – I bought those on release too, but that latter wine was finished 2 years ago…

This parcel was sold to Wilf Jaeger in 2005 who passed it on via a fermage agreement to Dujac to make the wine. I later heard from more than one source that all was not well between the two parties, so it’s no surprise that Dujac never show the wine – I hope that things are now on a more even keel. I don’t know the current status of this parcel between the parties…

Thomas-Moillard (and sometimes later labelled Domaine Charles Thomas) used ‘rotary fermenters’ during this period – ultra extraction – so it was hardly a surprise when they made hard wines – more of a surprise was that the 1998 and 2000 of this wine were so delicious and at a young age too – maybe they felt that they had to extract more in what they thought was a good vintage!

And, right from the start, what a wine this was – hard as nails! It was still impenetrable at 20 years old so I’m mildly shocked by how it’s now showing!

1999 Thomas-Moillard, Romanée St.Vivant
Lots of colour. A little alcoholic and still with a slug of creamy, almost resinous, aromatic oak – but also a hint of floral perfume too – and that’s new. Mouth-filling, silky, with a certain richness to the texture and depth of flavour – where has this fine texture come from? And come to that, where has the hard personality and tannin gone? It’s still a baby due to the overt concentration and still lacking a little grace, but a wine of (now!) obvious potential. Probably still not ‘ready’ for at least 5 more years but I’ll take today’s ‘drinkable.’ In fact, I’m quite enjoying it, even the second glass (shock) – there’s more than a decent chance for the remaining 4 or 5 bottles…
Rebuy – Maybe