2009 Alain Burguet, Gevrey-Chambertin Mes Favourites Vieilles Vignes
There’s spice on the nose, over soil – eventually a core of fruit, dark fruit, builds from the glass, accented with coconut. In the mouth this is pretty wide, there’s a decent amount of tannin too, but in form that offers cushioning rather than abrasion. There’s plenty of extraction in this. The finish is fine enough. I find it a chewy mouthful rather than a wine to contemplate – but there is a place for that too.
Rebuy – Yes

2008 Pierre Damoy, Chambertin Clos de Bèze
Medium, medium-plus colour. Lovely precise dark fruits on the nose, partly shaded to black, hints of minerals too before a beautiful note of violets takes centre-stage – just lovely. Cool in the mouth with initially understated impact, yet there is a wonderful complexity of fruit flavours. Just about perfect acidity finally meets tannin with a little hard grain to it. Long and very fine indeed – a clear winner!
Rebuy – Yes

The Grand Crus

The market is the market – there were 27 grand crus on the table – in today’s money, that’s probably 5-6,000 Euros if you wanted each bottle in you cellar – silly isn’t it(?)

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The Premier Crus
Tasted Friday 18th November 2011. The obvious difference when you move to these premiers (from the villages) is the extra sweetness and more intensity. I only found one of the wines a little austere – there were more in the grand crus. The average quality here is excellent though.

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This was a very good showing indeed – occasional wines were a little out of sorts, some a little austere and others were stylistically marked by oak. Despite all that, I found the average presentation much better than is normally the case for big en-primeur tastings in London, despite this tasting being about 2 months earlier in the calendar; I assume the ‘mere’ fifteen mile trip from Gevrey to Beaune allowed the wines to be fresher and probably not require additional doses of sulfur.

Part 1: The Villages

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