Plenty of good bottles between Christmas and New Year.
2012 Jean-Marc Vincent Santenay Gravité- France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Santenay (1/4/2016)
Wonderfully engaging nose of black cherries, smoke, violets and mineral. It is dense and velvety and flows across the palate in a most sensual way. Despite the wine’s plushness you get great clarity and the finish really fans out and persistence of flavor is admirable.
2013 Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru Clos de la Maréchale- France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru (1/4/2016)
Cherry and raspberry fruits are tinged with earth and spice. It is highly perfumed and has good depth of flavor. There’s plenty of minerality lurking just below the flesh. Delicious now, even better in a decade.
2013 Jean-Claude Boisset Saint-Aubin 1er Cru sur Gamay- France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Saint-Aubin 1er Cru (1/4/2016)
Very subtle and delicate. Has some white peach and lemon fruit. It is fine and understated in the mouth with flavours that build through the palate. The finish has good mineral cut.
2012 Domaine A.-F. Gros Chambolle-Musigny- France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Chambolle-Musigny (1/2/2016)
Has some gingerbread oak notes on the nose along with ripe cherry fruit. There are florals with air. It is plush and velvety in the mouth with cherry stone minerality just below the flesh.
2006 Sylvain Cathiard Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Aux Malconsorts- France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru (1/1/2016)
Has a slight coffee note to the aroma that I found just a tad off-putting (perhaps the bottle was slightly oxidised). There’s dense, spicy red and black fruits and plenty of minerality to the wine. It really builds through the palate and fans out on the finish.
2012 Domaine Armand Rousseau Père et Fils Ruchottes-Chambertin Clos des Ruchottes- France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Ruchottes-Chambertin Grand Cru (1/1/2016)
Bright and punchy nose of black cherry, raspberry, Asian spice, beetroot and earth. It is glossy in the mouth, a Gevrey of great polish and sophistication yet plenty of meat and earth to remind you of where it came from. It is thoroughly enjoyable now but should be splendid in a decade or two.
2000 Domaine Jean Chartron Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Clos de la Pucelle- France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru (12/27/2015)
Colour looks fresh. It has some mushroom and honey on the nose along with a little candied peach. It is rich and heady with just a hint of fruit rind bitterness to the finish.
2005 Domaine Denis Mortet Gevrey-Chambertin Mes Cinq Terroirs- France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Gevrey-Chambertin (12/27/2015)
Deeply pitched and oozing with black cherry and blackberry fruits. It has plenty of oak but it is commensurate with the level of dense, creamy fruit. It opens up beautifully in the glass to show some purple flower perfume. It is a luscious, almost a little bit slutty red Burg but an absolutely delicious wine that has Grand Cru depth and outstanding length of flavour.
2009 Henri Boillot Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Clos de la Mouchère- France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru (12/25/2015)
Quite a bit of reduction on the nose Once the sulphurous haze lifts there is the most pure expression of white peach you could ever hope for. It is dense and sappy and strewn with minerals. It is a wine of perfect shape and great intensity and the finish is so direct and has terrific cut. Still supremely youthful.
Nice notes! I have a six-pack of the 2012 Rousseau Clos des Ruchottes that I’m going to start drinking in 2032 or so. Interestingly Rousseau’s website suggest they rank 2012 above 2010 for their wines. I’m not inclined to dissent.
Was the coffee note on the Cathiard Malconsorts coffee as in coffee grits / reduction, or coffee in the sense of torrefaction / barrel toast? While this may be considered heresy in some quarters, I am a bit of a skeptic about Cathiard, finding the wines pretty marked by what I perceive to be sweetness from oak toast extractives (and chaptalisation may be at play too - hard to know, and up to a point that isn’t necessarily a problem). The wines are immensely seductive young, but seem to be better at age ten than age twenty… which I guess makes them nice choices in a restaurant, but for me ultimately less interesting. Of course, given the generational change at the domaine, I may be wrong to extrapolate from, say, the way the 1999s have aged to how the 2012s will age. Would be interested to hear other perspectives from those who know the Cathiard wines well.
I thought it was a slight oxidative coffee/mocha note William. I had a bottle of the same wine a couple of years ago and certainly didn’t see anything like a coffee note then.
Intersting about the Rousseau comments. I will say i tried them at the Wildman tasting last year and found them all spectacular. Village to Chambertin.
I haven’t had the full line-up of 2010 and 2012 Rousseau but the 2010 Rousseau Gevrey is quite a bit better than the 2012 Gevrey. One of the greatest young village wines I can remember having ever tasted.
I had never heard of this Jean-Marc Vincent untill recently : a friend of mine offered a bottle of 2011 Meursault les Cras which I thought was excellent . Nice acidities , long finish , good concentration , well above the usual quality of a Villages wine . I plan on finding out more about him .
A new kid on the block ?
Very tasty list! Even though he doesn’t get much ‘love’ on this board (nothing negative, just not too many notes), I’m a big fan of the Mortet wines. Even with the passing of Denis in Jan 2006 and the abrupt start to his lead winemaking career, seems like Arnaud is really doing good-great work. Something like a ‘dialed back’ Dugat or Dugat-Py, has that creamy, slutty taste/structure that you write about here. Color me a fan!
If I had to make Dugat comparisons re. Mortet, I would say Claude Dugat rather than Bernard Dugat-Py. Arnaud’s wines are really not anywhere near as extracted as Bernard & Loïc’s. He is also working in a pretty reductive style, which certainly marked the 12s and 13s from barrel and is going to need proper cellaring to resolve. So I’d suggest the wines are a bit less up front and ‘in your face’ than they used to be.
Tangentially, the Mortet 2004 Cinq Terroirs is really, really successful.
As for the Rousseau Gevrey AOC 2010 vs 2012 discussion, that will be fun to look at in ten to fifteen years! The bottom line is that one should own both. Since the 1964 is still drinking well, I am confident these can go a long time in the cellar.
They are great wines in both colours and I think you’d enjoy them very much Herwig. Jean-Marc is a very thoughtful vigneron and his vineyards are some of the healthiest in the whole Cote. He is well respected amongst his peers with the likes of Olivier Lamy often deferring to Jean-Marc on viticulture matters. The wines are pure and precise. The reds have a fair bit of whole bunch and Jean-Marc uses Chassin wood exclusively. I very much like his Santenay wines. From 2013 the Beaurepaire Blanc is the stand out and the Gravieres Rouge is a cracker. According to Jean-Marc “the cuvee “Gravité” is a selection made in the oldest plots of land of the domain (almost 70 years of age), with each plant producing no more than 200gm of grape (a yield of 15Hl / ha). We select the best terroir in red in Santenay, constituted by a particular layer of soil from the geological age of “Average Jurassic”. These terroirs are rare in the “Cote de Beaune” and met usually only in the “Côte de Nuits”, in villages like Gevrey-Chambertin or Vosne-Romanee. A particular wine making, without any pumping and totally by gravity allows us to obtain a supplement of flesh of fruit (that explains the name)”. Only 1200 bottles are produced.
I’ll go ahead and chime in and state that the '08 is also very good. I opened one just last night for dinner with some mates and it was showing fantastically well.