98 louis jadot beaune

By billn on October 07, 2009 #degustation

jadot_beaune

1998 Louis Jadot, Beaune
This has medium, medium-plus colour – relatively dark and young looking for a 10 year-old. The nose is showing some maturity with blood, iron, graphite – rare Chateaubriand. With time, there are faint oxidised notes which rather disconcertingly gives me the the overall impression that it smells more like Chianti than Beaune, but that’s short-lived, additional time builds a slightly musky base – seems more like burgundy now! Good acidity and a decent base of grainy, almost velvety tannin that appears in the mid-palate – hardly any astringency now. The fruit has a dark-red sweet-sour presence, but is well (sweet-sour) balanced. Medium length. I would say that this is approaching its plateau of maturity – another couple of years should do it – and given its relative power, it should hold there for at at lease a decade…
Rebuy – Yes
There’s a lot to be said for stocking up on well made villages wines, a good performance like this makes your night, and a bad performance doesn’t hurt as much as if it had been a grand cru…!

07 michele et patrice rion chambolle 1er charmes

By billn on October 06, 2009 #degustation

rion_chambolle_charmes

2007 Michele et Patrice Rion, Chambolle-Musigny 1er Les Charmes
Medium cherry-red. The first sniff is of herbs – bouquet garni – slowly a depth builds that’s edged with vanilla, the fruit is never really dominant. Sweet, nicely concentrated, a leading edge of acidity that’s close to being balanced. A little oak flavour and quite a lot of vanilla (oak) flavour. Actually too much for me, despite how long that flavour lingers. Slightly better on day two, but it still smells and tastes too much like ice-cream right now. No concern here about the mid-term, but that’s two 07 Chambolles in a row that have their early drinking promise compromised by their oak treatment.
Rebuy – Maybe

chablis & the art of eating

By billn on October 05, 2009 #books, maps, magazines, films even podcasts!

81-copyOkay, not strictly a wine magazine, but…

I have to thank Alice Feiring for alerting me to this, the magazine ‘The Art of Eating‘ by Edward Behr, and in particular his most recent issue that has 20 of the magazine’s 48 pages dedicated to Chablis – a further seven pages offer recipes to match.

There is a very worthy profile of Chablis that was put together by Allen Meadows that used to be found on a few websites (though currently none seem available) – this is a different approach by Behr. Meadow’s is more academic in the reading, listing the vineyards and the areas they cover together with some history, whereas Behr’s is more conversational and ‘voyeuristic’, though the detail is exemplary, and it also includes a few of the top domaines in profile. Whilst the two are completely complimentary, I marginally prefer Behr’s approach and thoroughly enjoyed not just the article, but the magazine as a whole – well worth the $15 issue price delivered to Europe – fully recommended.

07 lignier-michelot chambolle vieilles vignes

By billn on October 04, 2009 #degustation

lignier_michelot_chambolle

2007 Lignier-Michelot, Chambolle-Musigny Vieilles Vignes
Medium cherry-red. Rather more depth of toasty oak than I think necessary for a Chambolle – particularly a villages wine – it may have been okay for 2005/2006, but the precocious, friendly 07s just don’t need that much. There’s even a trace of reduction so I decanted; about an hour is needed to lift most of the dark oak/reduction. Width develops and the fruit remains quite dark, it’s not quite what I’m looking for from a Chambolle though – that said, the last drops in the glass smell very pretty indeed. Good texture and actually a very nice intensity, good acidity and an impressive extra dimension of flavour – it’s very nice and shows good length. Just a shame about the oak, it spoils for me the early drinking potential of the wine.
Rebuy – Maybe

harvest 2009 update from domaine fourrier

By billn on October 02, 2009 #vintage 2009

A double update – from both Vicki and from Jean-Marie!

Many things have already been said on the web about the 2009 Vintage, and it is already being compared to the 05 vintage. We have attached some temperature and light, and rain charts which show the differences between the 2005 and 2009 which show that of course no vintage is the same. Jean-Marie actually sees it more as a marriage of the 99’s and 05’s. Still at the end of the day it is a vintage in it’s own right and a very exciting one too!

The grapes at harvest were beautifully small, so much so that some tiny ones which were no bigger than black currants fell through the grid of our sorting table and we recuperated them and put them in the vat! Already on the 2nd day in the vats the colour had changed to a bright pink, very unlike the last couple of years when we had to wait 2 or 3 days for this to happen. Fermentations, once they got going have been very quick and produced lots of heat, so we had to be very careful not to let them get too hot. Pigeage this year was not for the faint hearted, given the amount of mass solid compared to mass liquid. It has been known in the past few weeks for two very fit (strong) men to take around one hour to pigeage any given cuve. Even our porters in the vineyards were saying that they couldn’t remember a year where the cases were so heavy.

Finally, I can’t remember the last time I have seen JM smiling quite so much on the sorting table during a harvest! I have attached some photos to show you why!
Vicki Fourrier

The Growing season was absolutely perfect, with rain when we needed some and sun the rest of the time, the funny things is sometime you have nothing to say as all the conditions was right, the last month before picking was made of warm days and cool nights, so all the ingredients to have some great fruits.

Fruits at the harvest had the perfect size with lots of millerandage quite a lots of the berries had the size of Blackcurrant, so I insist on the fact that it’s not just the yield per hectare but also the ratio skin to juice which is more important for natural concentration.

The very unusual thing was how wild was the natural yeast to ferment this yeast, like if they’ve was as happy as the vigneron to find such great grapes!

All those tiny grapes released their sugar and more acidity later during the fermentations to give a last kick of extraction before the vats finished fermenting in a concert of Aromas.

After pressing our first vat today and tasting the first wine, I can just say that if we had a big smile on our face during the winemaking, tasting the result under the press has got me very excited indeed!

The only negative thing about 2009 is to put 2008 a bit to quickly in the shadow.
Jean-Marie Fourrier

site tidying…

By billn on September 30, 2009 #site updates

discovering burgundyPart of the long-term updating of the site is to bring more and more of the content under the site (content) management tool. As per my previous note, the transfer of the ‘reports’ keeps moving at its snail pace of progress. Today 2003, much of 2004 plus 2007/8/9 reports are now ‘migrated’ (done!).

Yesterday I made a similar move with the ‘reference’ section that’s titled ‘discovering burgundy’ – it’s now here. I filled in a couple of the holes, but the content is largely as before – so what benefits? Well the benefits are all mine – if I add a new page in a particular section, all the others are updated automatically – I don’t need to adjust 25 pages to reflect the addition. I think they call it progress!

Burgundy Report

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