BdM

Monday Table at Melbourne’s Rockpool Bar and Grill last night. The loose theme was older wines from Bonneau du Martray. The 1986 CC was a late scratching due to cork taint.
Champagne Bracket

2002 Krug Champagne Vintage Brut: Complex notes of grilled nuts, preserved lemons, brulee and spice. It is full, dense and rich, cut by sharp acidity. It has great depth and length and is still quite tight. Needs time.

2002 Piper-Heidsieck Champagne Cuvée Rare: Generous, full, open and ready for business. It has some candied fruits and plenty of spice. It is rich and creamy with relatively high dosage countered nicely by a line of fine acidity.

White Burg Bracket (1)

1979 Domaine Chandon de Briailles Corton Blanc: There’s some struck match to the aroma along with signs of age, think decaying leaves and earth. It is kind of built like Coche in the mouth, with plenty of dry extract. There are preserved lemon flavours and good depth. Length is excellent and it was fabulous with sautéed pine mushroom, white polenta and black truffles.

1982 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: A fabulous bottle. Rich, unctuous, slightly exotic and fresh. Great volume. The perfect amount of honeyed development and a pleasant light butteriness against the gums. Great length.

1984 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: A really nice showing. There’s some white mushroom and toasty development on the nose. It has rich white peach fruit and a line of sharp acidity. With food it drinks well.

1985 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: I have had better bottles of this and if it was 5 years old you’d scream premox. The nose had bruised apples and a bit of butterscotch. The palate still had good acid line but flavours were blunt.

1987 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: A relatively deep colour but the wine drank well. The nose has some honey and toast along with a suggestion of brown spice. It is full in the mouth the orchard fruit flavours and moderate acidity and length.

White Burg Bracket (2)

1988 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: A fine nose of white peach, citrus and nougat. It is complex, subtle direct and long. Still plenty left in the tank.

1992 Faiveley Corton-Charlemagne: Exotic, rich, fat, luscious and long. It has some vanilla spice and sappy fruits. There’s some decaying leave tertiary notes sneaking in.

1993 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: Fresh fruit aromas of white peach and green melon. There’s just a hint of white mushroom sneaking in. It is mid-weight, nicely balanced and cut by bright, minerally acidity.

2000 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: Dense, sharp, direct, salty and rich. So fresh, so intense, so youthful, so good.

2008 Bonneau du Martray Corton-Charlemagne: More advanced than the ’08 with a gentle nuttiness evident on the nose. There are exotic fruits and a spine of chalky acidity. You get some preserved lemon flavour and length is admirable.

Red Burg Bracket

1962 Domaine Jaboulet-Vercherre Corton-Languettes: Earthy, sweet and vinous with plenty of smoke and decaying leaves to the aroma. There’s sweet cherry fruit at its heart and balance and depth are excellent. It is lacy of texture and has terrific persistence.

1972 Bonneau du Martray Corton: A touch of sous bois on the nose along with sweet earth, smoke and meats. It is sweet and vinous in the mouth with good volume and a line of fine, minerally acidity. In a most lovely place right now.

1982 Bonneau du Martray Corton: Sweet cherry and plum fruits are tinged with earth. It is complex, savoury, bright and punchy. Flavours are deep and direct and it finishes with good cut and really fans out.

2013 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Corton: Very bright and punchy with a nose of dried flowers and freshly grated ginger. Red and black fruits are back-lit by whippy acidity and there are notes of rhubarb and stones too. It is very young and tight and needs serious cellar time to unfurl.

1976 Faiveley Corton-Clos des Cortons Faiveley: Not quite as good as the last bottle I had. It had baked earth, burnt fig and brown sugar notes a plenty. The palate was low acid, full and round.

Dessert Wine Bracket

1840 Cantine Florio Marsala Superiore Riserva ACI: Complex aromatics of raisins, bitter chocolate, cumin, cardamom, teak and honey. It has some spirity kick and in the mouth it has echoes of sweetness but is dominated by more savoury flavours. It is woodsy with excellent intensity and you can still taste the wine about 20 minutes after the last sip.

2009 Château d’Yquem, Sauternes: Super tropical nose of passionfruit, guava and honeydew. There are dried apricots, lavender and blossom notes too. It has terrific volume and intensity and for all of its sweet lusciousness there’s energy and balance. It drives on and on once swallowed and despite being very young is an incredibly delicious and sensual Yquem.

2014 Château d’Yquem, Sauternes: straight off the boat this was quite tight, offering a faint whiff of coconut ice, dried apricot and lavender. It is dense, compact and incredibly intense but everything is under a tight hold for now. It has a sweet and luscious core and bright acid cut punctuating the finish.

Just scanned the whole post and didn’t find any Brunello…

In 2 weeks I´m doing a Corton & Charlemagne tasting (15 CC, 15 C rouge) with the 1979 and 1985 CC BdM … we´ll see how they´re doing …

Great night mate, enjoyed it a lot!

The '85 certainly didn’t look as good as previous bottles, and I thought even the '88 showed a not as well as we have seen it before, but overall the quality and condition of the wines was excellent.

Good to see the '82 look so good again, hard to tell if it looked even 10 years old!

That 1840 Marsala sure was interesting, and worked really well with that desert!

+1
But I like the Cuvee Rare. Hedonistic with dosage and a gold filigree “label” to match. A bargain when they had it on WTSO.

If this is about Brunello, why are all the wines in FRENCH?

BdM has long been claimed only by Bonneau du Martray. Wish I could try that 82. Great notes. Wonder what the new ownership will bring . . . beside much higher pricing.

I too was expecting Brunello. But from Jeremy?

I no longer follow the BdM. Too many issues. Perhaps the new owner will benefit from the diagnosis of the cause of premox. Probably raise the price in any event.

Nice notes on older wines which look good. I had good luck with a few older wines from early '90s and even 1996 and 2000 when the latter were young. But now I am down to two bottles of the 2010.

Prices are set to soar like an eagle.

gonna scream over that pricing.

Just opened a 76 BDM corton, notes similar to your 72. Very fine wine and enjoyable.

BdM = Brunello di Montalcino
Always

08?

I concur!! (Cuvee Rare followed by Brunello is my kind of night!)

Opened this thread expecting Bonneau du Martray notes, so thanks. Confused about the 2000 and 2008 notes though. Are the years switched?

'00 whites when they are good, are really very good.

This was a classic, top '00 white burg. The’08 just looked a bit ordinary next to it, not as focused and precise - but many of us did pick the '00 as an '00 and the '08 as '08, for what that’s worth.

I was not so clever and thought the 00 an 08 so the notes ring true to the bottles.

Not sure that '08’s looked like '00’s when younger.

The best '00’s were finer and more precise, the same '08’s are a bit fatter and riper…

The 1992 has always been a mind bending wine for me in contrast to the catastrophe of later vintages.