Friends ‘came to tea’ and given that it was over 30°C outside, it seemed that cassoulet was the order of the day 🙂

One of the beautiful things about burgundy wine, is that when you line up 2 or 3 bottles, there’s virtually zero chance of anyone else in the world is drinking the same as you – I’m pretty confident that it was the case for these three…

Celine et Laurent Tripoz, Cremant de Bourgogne – Prestige
From magnum – and a heavy one at that! Golden colour. The nose has an impressively concentrated core of ripe fruit – it starts a little in the direction of apricot but slowly seems more like a salt-edged ripe lemon. With the bubbles – modestly fine beaded – this is of-course mouth-filling. Fresh and mouth-watering with an innate sweetness to the ripe fruit but a line of salinity from the mid-palate into the finish. Despite the ripeness this has an engaging fresh vivacity that keeps bringing your lips back to the bottle – Yum!
Rebuy – Yes

2014 Testut, Chablis 1er Les Forêts
High grade packaging here – creamy-white wax-topped – and a wine with elevage in 100% new acacia-wood barrels no-less!
Although I didn’t note it at the domaine, here I do have an oak (acacia!) impression on the nose, but a relatively modest one – overall a wine with a big core of aroma, though just a little tight, reluctantly allowing a little smoky ripe lemon to escape the confines of the glass. Very wide in the mouth with a growing volume of flavour and certainly a wine that gains in intensity. The flavour has the requisite salinity and, if anything, seems constructed like a grand cru – but I’ve been a bad boy and really opened this far too soon. Time in the glass does allow it to relax a little and the texture becomes more and more silky, the wine offering a very nice, glossy citrus flavour. Decant or wait 5 years, but good stuff!
Rebuy – Yes

2012 Comte Liger-Belair, Vosne-Romanée
This is a case of wine that I’m a little disappointed with, and I’m sure that I’m the one to blame – and that’s because I forgot about the case! When I first moved into the apartment in Beaune, I used one bedroom to store a couple of cases of wine – that was okay to start with, because it was winter! After 3 weeks of 35°C+ in 2015 I suddenly remembered the case – the bedroom was 28°C. The case was rescued and has averaged 13-16° since then, but I’ve retained a nagging doubt about every bottle – all have an aroma and flavour note that I’ve never found in another vintage from Louis-Michel. It’s a little like a firework-style reduction – I even had one bottle that was just not good.
This is quite good aromatically and absolutely lovely in the mouth – almost filigree. It’s a thing of beauty but with that modest reductive thing as an ever-present. Maybe it’s just me and they are all like this, but this was a very enjoyable bottle all the same…
Rebuy – Yes

Back in Beaune this weekend – and it was a warm one – 33°C on Sunday! The wines had a good showing – 3 from 3 were winners

2013 Chezeaux, Gevrey-Chambertin Clos des Chezeaux
Amélie Berthaut’s first vintage in the cellar, and this is a very nice wine indeed. The red fruit is just a little powdery, but it also has the impression of raspberry intensity and fresh crunchiness. Showcasing the best of 2013 with plenty of acidity but really an alive impression to the flavour. Only the faintest drag to the tannin. A bottle that drains very quickly – delicious wine!
Rebuy – Yes

2014 Nathalie & Gilles Fevre, Chablis 1er Vaulorent
Pale lemon yellow. A really inviting, fresh, salty seashore with a tang of lemon – hmm – already mouth-watering! Quite large in the mouth, but fabulously complex, with mouth-watering sweetly acid flavours – still with a good weight of flavour in the mid-palate. Just a gorgeous wine, it’s as tasty as the fabulous 14 Gueguen Vaucopins with a little extra richness of texture.
Rebuy – Yes

2012 Dublère, Beaune 1er Blanches Fleurs
My second of these in the last month, but what an inspired pairing to go with (Beaune market) prawns, cooked with tomatoes and a little white wine. It’s the oak that I previously commented on, that rounds out the palate, a palate that remains absolutely juicy and fresh. The nose retains a smooth red fruit, hardly extravagant, but not timid either. Plush, fresh and and waves of barrel-inflected flavours from the mid-palate into the finish. Absolutely yum!
Rebuy – Yes

Camus have long been an easy target for the pooh-poohers, but this is really on another level vs the Lambrays of yesterday, for less money…

1998 Camus, Chambertin
The nose takes just a little while to take its coat off, but it has a real floral perfume – and quite a rare one – lavender mixes with the silky red-brown fruit impression. It’s very inviting indeed. Mouthfilling, fresh, lots of intensity and even more complexity. I’m simply enjoying this wine profusely. Good length and it has a certain distinction…
Rebuy – Yes

The performance of the (half-dozen) 2000 Lambrays I bought en-primeur have been all over the map. The last was bretty and old, the one before that was drinking perfectly – and this? Well, if anything, it’s almost too young!

2000 Clos des Lambrays
A good, deep, colour – showing some age. The nose is fresh, showing a suggestion of pyrazine, and a herby dark fruit. Wide, fresh and very tasty on the palate with a growing intensity, some tannin and a mouth-watering sweetness. Very much a young showing here, some angles to the shape but overall this is worth my time (unlike my last bottle). To be clear, there is no extra distinction here vs a creditable Gevrey 1er, but in this instance, some flashes of good flavour – so a tasty wine, but one to wait for!
Rebuy – Maybe With such inconsistency, I can’t unreservedly recommend it…

This Fixin has, for a long time, been sub-optimal in terms of approachability, but it seems to have turned the corner now, albeit with this bottle bringing a little extra something that was unwanted.

1998 Pierre Gelin, Fixin 1er Clos Napoléon
Medium, medium-plus red colour – not a very mature colour but still with some age of-course. The nose has a fine and silky red berry fruit with a just a little faint roast impression and, less attractively, a subtle, but present, impression of brett. In the mouth this is fresh, with fine energy – red-fruited again, and actually with a very nice clarity of flavour. The (previously harsh) tannin is really now something of an anecdote. Overall – the brett excepted, and every bottle will be different – this is a big turnaround performance. Tasty wine.
Rebuy – Maybe

2010 Camille Giroud, Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Les Vergers
Medium, medium-plus lemon yellow. Fresh, mineral, a hint of citrus – a warmer ripeness of yellow citrus at the core – very attractive! Fresh and citrus in personality with a growing intensity – this is very light and seemingly mobile over the palate – faint sweetness that brings a hint of oak flavour to the fore too. Less full, seemingly finer in shape, than the Tête du Clos from earlier this week. A super crescendo of finishing flavour, here with a very late arriving suggestion of firework reduction. Simply lovely!
Rebuy – Yes

And I think I have a third 1998, a red grand cru lined-up for later today 😉

2008 Sylvain Pataille, Bourgogne Le Chapitre
Medium plus colour. What a lovely nose – almost a coal-style mineral impression, and a fine red fruit edged with reduction. Fresh, mouth-filling, growing in intensity – really growing! This has a lovely texture and lots of flavour complexity. It’s really a beauty, holding onto a good note in the finish too. Very yum indeed!
Rebuy – Yes

2010 Camille Giroud, Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Tête du Clos
Quite a deep colour. The nose is full and gunpowder reductive. In the mouth this explodes over the palate, leading with a lovely intensity of acid-led flavour that melt with sweetly-acidulated fruit. Quite a big wine and one that brings an extra wave of flavour in the finish. Big, almost brusque, but deeply involving. Really super!
Rebuy – Yes

2012 Dubreuil-Fontaine, Pernand-Vergelesses 1er Clos Berthet
Here I definitely took my own advice – this is already the last bottle from the case, and each has been excellent – keenly priced too! Medium-pale colour. The nose is never massively endowed, but offers fine, nicely defined, pure fruit notes, fresh fruit. Wide and fresh in the mouth; a growing intensity of penetrating flavour. Rounder on style than, say, St.Aubin, but ingraining flavour and no lack of mineral, stony finishing flavour. Simply excellent, a bottle that always emptied very fast…
Rebuy – Yes

1998 Louis Jadot, Beaune 1er Les Grèves
Here a négoce bottling.
Here is a good and deep fruit, mineral inflected in a coal way that reminds me of the Pataille – just with more age. Wide in the palate – and quite fresh too. There is the last vestige of what may have been slightly astringent tannin, but today not-so. Certainly there’s a little bitterness in the finish, but more towards bitter-chocolate than outright (not nice) bitterness. Over time in the glass, the mineral component diminishes if never leaves, the fruit gets redder and adds a suggestion of flowers. Still slightly young, but definitely entering an early-drinking phase.
Rebuy – Yes

Typical – perfect condition for this, the last white from my case of 08 Pillots – but the one with my least favourite profile due to the riper fruit and vanilla, still, rather a tasty wine. Can’t win them all…

2008 Paul Pillot, Chassagne-Montrachet 1er La Grand Montagne
Hurrah – yellow colour! The nose is fresh, ripe-fruited and with a hint of oaky-vanilla. In the mouth this has a lovely intensity, a little fatter bump of ripe fruit in the middle before fading on a great line once more. The flavour is still a little vanilla inflected. A great line of intensity, indeed tension though – yum!
Day 2: ouf! No fat, no vanilla – just fabulous wine – it turns the screw of pain re the two lost caillerets…
Rebuy – Yes But no, for obvious reasons…

2009 Gilles Bouton, Chassagne-Montrachet Les Voillenots Dessus
Deeply coloured – ooh, and what a beautiful nose of silky ripe fruit – super enticing. In the mouth, there’s now none of the rusticity of this wine when it was young – but there’s still plenty of power for a villages wine. More a pizza than a salmon wine, but really enjoyable – yum!
Rebuy – Yes

2007 Mischief & Mayhem, Puligny-Montrachet 1er Caillerets
On pouring in the kitchen, the dark colour hard my heart sinking (once more) but outside in the garden, it was clear that this remains yellow not golden – even if dark yellow! The nose actually has a reductive twist and some exotic yellow fruit. In the mouth this is very large-scaled and with much less overt acidity, indeed freshness, than M&M’s 2007 Meursault Charmes. In style, I might have guessed this to be a typical (un-p.oxed) 2005 – i.e. mouth-filling and massively scaled – highly impressive, without being particularly delicious. Quite a good wine. I have another but many other things taste better to me at this stage, so I’ll bite the bullet and wait a while longer – I know I’m not taking my own advice, but why drink it if I don’t enjoy it?!
Rebuy – No

2005 des Croix, Bourgogne Pinot Noir
Still deeply coloured. The nose offers up sweet fruit of decent freshness, and now, for the first time, a vibration of extra age-driven complexity – yum! In the mouth this has plenty of volume and great texture. Without being super-fresh this is very well-balanced and nicely weighted – the fruit is, however, rather sweet and close to cordial-like. I find the fruit just a little distracting – but I can wait 😉 For a Bourgogne, this sits below the Barthod 05 today in terms of pure deliciousness, but overall, it’s really not far behind!
Rebuy – Yes

2008 Prince Florent de Merode, Ladoix Les Chaillots
This wine was always brilliant value, usually cheaper than a whole swathe of Bourgognes – but young, I found a few odd flavours in this wine – but no more! The nose is fresh and really only very modestly herbal – in that 2008 vernacular. In the mouth this has a good dose of complexity – herbs and fruit – and a very endearing freshness that makes it moreish. This wine is really coming into its own now – fresh, herby but with decent fruit and a certain ebullience. Yum!
Rebuy – Yes