Pop and pour with Friday night baseball. Delightful little Chardonnay. Youthful, with a bit of oak, lemon and apple on the nose. The wine has a clean dry nicely acidic balanced mouth and a long lingering finish. Tasty and happy, not overly complex. Lots of gleeful noises from my friends who wondered where in California they made such yummy chards. France, of course. Great QPR.
I haven’t had that many Bourgogne blancs, but this surpassed my modest expectations. How do folks compare this with other entry level BBs? I’m curious after the recent PYCM discussion.
This might age nicely, will be fun to try these over a few years. Or maybe just drink them quickly. I’m also interested in holding one back and seeing how it compares to a '13 Combettes I bought with these.
Rich, Sauzet is a high quality producer (notwithstanding premox, which won’t be a factor at this young age), so I’d expect that Blanc to be of similar quality to Blancs from other quality producers, like PYCM, Roulot, Carillon, etc. At around $30, it’s priced similarly (or a little less) than those I listed. You can get nice Bourgogne Blancs from good producers for even less, down into the low 20s.
Not exactly a unique discovery, but with all the focus on premium wines, seems like Bourgogne blanc could be a deep, fun, and reasonably priced vein to mine.
Its hard to know what constitutes “value” in this space. Roulot has been leaping up in price and, to my mind, is no longer worth it. I bought some Henri Germain 2013 Bourgogne Blanc which is pleasant enough but candidly its hard to argue that its a better value than good village or 1’er cru Chablis which is readily found at the same price range. Does 2010 Billaud Simon Montee de Tonnerre represent better value at a little over $40 per? I suspect it does.
Absolutely! We drink a lot of it, because (as you say) it’s as good/better than almost any California Chardonnay (for my palate), at a relatively affordable price (except for a few that have crossed the $35-40 barrier)
Looking at just K&L (my local very good wine store), their selection of under $50 French Chardonnay is really interesting. Mostly recent vintages from Burgundy/Chablis, and they have just about 10 choices (plus or minus a few) at every $5 interval from $20 to $50. So that’s 80 wines in this fairly narrow price range. 80 from just one retailer! Even the most dedicated WB would be hard pressed to try them all. And in this range you have a wide representation of appellations, as well as 1ers, and even some GCs at the upper end (from Chablisienne, Fevre, Moreau).
Leads me to think that this wine industry really has our (i.e. we consumers’) number. Speaking for myself, I try to make rational, good quality choices, but I still have to use a ton of guess work. First I start with rough style (hmmm … I sure like those French/mineral-ly styled chards), then price point (let’s say $30-$35) and just from one store I have twenty choices. Start poking around with CT/WS Pro and I have vastly more. Many (most) have zero reviews from any source. How to choose?
I picked the Sauzet because I could find believable reviews, it’s a ‘good name’ and it was in the price point I was comfortable with. My starting point was more or less ‘I wonder if a Bourgogne blanc would scratch my white Burg itch, and I really like the other Sauzets I’ve tried.’ And I’m pretty happy with it.
Wine tastings are fun and really useful, so I try to attend as many as I can, but that can only give you so much coverage. If you really wanted to be beyond berserk and were committed to your $30 - $35 price point, you could buy one bottle of all 20 choices, try them in one monster tasting, and then go long on your favorite. But since that’s hard I will thank all WB/CT people in advance for being the biggest tasting group ever and helping me navigate these so complex choices.
In sum: I’m glad I found a $33 white burg that was enjoyable. But I can understand why people are put off by this whole ‘wine choice’ thing.
K and L is my local retailer too, and the plethora of choices can be dizzying. One resource beyond this board that I’ve found useful is a subscription to Bourgogne Aujourd’hui. This publication has a monthly magazine but also a website where you can search for producers and vintages. You can subscribe to one or both. I subscribe just to the searchable database of notes/scores because my French is too rusty for entire articles. They give a written description and a numerical score to each wine. They are particularly useful because they often cover lesser known burg and beaujolais producers. I’ve recently gotten into Santenay, and found the publication invaluable for navigating a bunch of unknown-to-me producers. Of course, the downside is that I’ve bought a lot more wine since subscribing!