Time to relax after so much work
Insanely large amount of wine over the last few days after a few busy weeks where I had time for wine.
Thursday night at Racines I had a superb food and wine combination: a vin naturel (no sulfur, very minimal wine making) from Claude Courtois, the father of natural wine making in France. The wine was a blend of three varieties and had been intentionally affected by flor, of the variety used in Sherry. The nose was of rare purity, like the first apples and pears of the season. This kind of wine is confronting, more like a barrel sample from a few months after vintage but I really like it. Tragically, almost impossible to export due to the very volatile nature of the wine.
We took this wine with cheese. With Morbier and Comté, this was a revelation, one of the best combinations I’ve ever had.
Friday night I was in Beaune talking to some friends, one of who specialises in very old wines of Burgundy. We talked about these natural wines and he pulled out a Daniel Boulard “Cuvée Corcelette” 2006 from Morgon. This was fine, fruity, well structured but lacking interest.
The appellation of Morgon was enough to move things on to the surprises that old Beaujolais hold. Phillipe, the owner of the store, ran off and came back with bottle with a masked label. He poured it, and there was a surprise: black in colour and very volatile. The label revealed, it was a 1921 Beaujolais.
He insisted he could make up for that, and opened another bottle. The nose was sublime, with dried cherry, Piment d’Espelette (like paprika but fruitier), vanilla and dried pork. The palate was at first awkward, very acid and a let down after the nose. Over an hour it really came together but demanded food. Before heading off for pizza, Phillipe revealed the label: a J. Faiveley Beaujolais Saint-Amour 1957:
After this, we went to a bar for an increasingly humorous evening of schizophrenic drinking, mostly zero sulfur wines from Marcel Lapierre. All good but… wasn’t tasting them very analytically at this stage. Things got even funnier when, after 10 phone calls from home, Phillipe was locked out. Making the best of it, be bought a lounge at the bar and all those still standing at 2am joined him to carry it across Beaune back to his store where it dropped down on it and promptly fell asleep!
Maybe it’s true what they say about sulfur, because I woke up later that morning with nothing really resembling a hang over. I sped up the N74 to Gevrey for a tasting at Dupont-Tisserandot. This tasting almost didn’t end. Plenty of good wines in a more traditional style. I particularly liked the 2006 Charmes-Chambertin as well as the Gevrey and Nuits village wines, which were amazing bargains.
Back in the car, I hit a record, 18 minutes from Gevrey to Beaune. The reason for my haste, a tasting at Camille Giroud. Another tasting in which half the wines tasted were to be the last bottle opened. The highlight from 2007 are the beautifully lifted Charmes-Chambertin and the components of a Vosne-Romanée vieilles vignes, with different levels of sulfur. As you can see, this is becoming a huge area of interest for French producers.
Back up the côte to drop off some samples at Morey and then a much more leisurely drive back to Beaune for a Nupant Hautes-Côtes de Bourgogne 2006 which was correct but boring.
The next morning, it was up toward Chambolle for some debudding. This is the main means of limiting yield in Burgundy. Workers inspect each vine (10000 to the hectare) and decide which buds or shoots will be the strongest and remove all but 2 to 5, depending on the appellation, vine age and trellising method. It’s back breaking work, because the vines are only a foot high. There’s really no way to do it comfortably.
David and I bent over debudding
Before
After
That said, it made for a great break from sitting in front of a computer and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The prospect of doing it every day, 10 hours a day, for a month (the case for any small domaine owners who cannot afford to pay others to do it) removes any romance.
Lunch consisted of a simple pasta with a Côtes du Jura (awful) and Vincent Dureuil-Janthial Rully and Rully 1er cru blanc. These wines needed a very long decant it seemed to we took a few glasses and got back to work.
By quitting time, around 7, it was time for a BBQ. After hours in the vineyard — in both sun and rain — the first glass of wine tastes particularly fine. The Rully had positively transformed, showing a lot more minerality and finesse than earlier. The only issue is the overt oak handling: on the one hand, I loved the fruit now, but feel a desire to wait a few years until the oak integrates a little more. We’ll see.
We fired up the BBQ, fueled by vineyard cuttings and root stocks.
While we happily burned meat, Gen opened a Domaine Lucie et Auguste Lignier Morey-Saint-Denis 2004, dropped around by Kellen Lignier as thanks to my host for a lend of his fork lift. Gen pulled the cork, which was stamped Domaine Hubert Lignier. A fitting allegory of the familial situation chez Lignier. This was well made but didn’t really do much for me.
We also had a Camille Giroud Chambertin 2004, a rather generous sample from David Croix at Camille Giroud. This showed almost none of the greenness one expects from 2004. David confirmed that they did extremely close sorting and totally destemmed to avoid it. The wine was light by Grand Crus standards but had some savoury fruit that was quite gourmand. A great example of the positive side of 2004.
The next day, it was back to the vineyards for a few hours for more debudding. The only event was my almost standing on the most scared looking hare I’ve ever seen:
Dinner was accompanied by a Vincent Dureuil-Janthial Rully 1er Cru rouge 2006 which was very pretty, and also quite elegant, great wine for drinking with summery food.
