'16 Ramonet with '15 Grand Crus

I generally run a bit of a blog on the board each year we are in Burgundy and must apologise for not doing so this year. We have been so bloody busy. Having just completed two fabulous weeks along the Cote, I’ll start putting up some notes in this thread as I get them in order.

We stayed at our usual digs in Meursault and I cannot recommend Chez Hall enough. Fellow board member, Anthony Hall has a brilliant property here. Check it out at http://www.burgundyman.com

Another fellow board member, Paul Hanna, was on his first trip to the region, despite consuming a ridiculous amount of the regions finest over the years. I think he has an unrealistic view of what sort of visits one gets in Burgundy. Our first 6 visits happened to be Rousseau, Comte de Vogüé, Comte Liger-Belair, Blain-Gagnard, Dujac and Roulot.

We commenced with Rousseau. It is not a bad thing to drink Rousseau Chambertin at 9am in the morning. Well, it might be bad but it sure tastes good. We had a concise and thoroughly enjoyable visit with Cyrielle Rousseau to kick off an epic fortnight in Burgundy. Cyrielle is a good way to start the day. The ‘17’s were being racked and only two wines were available for tasting.

2017 Domaine Armand Rousseau Père et Fils Chambertin, Grand Cru: Good generosity of sweet berry and red currant fruits. It has nice build, is very pretty and oozes minerality. Excellent potential here.

2017 Domaine Armand Rousseau Père et Fils Chambertin-Clos de Bèze, Grand Cru: Fruits vacillate between red and black. It is deep, meaty and spicy with a suggestion of moss. The finish is crisp and energetic and tastes of pomegranate.

Cyrielle worked harvest here in Oregon in 2011. Had the good fortune to dine and party with her on a few occasions. She is a wonderful and amazingly level headed person.

François Millet has a poetic way of describing his wines, but if you listen closely enough he talks a lot of sense. He is a deep thinker and his wines are incredibly pure and transparent. We had a wonderful visit with him and tasted through all of the ‘17’s. Most of these were pre-malo but you can still get an excellent read on the wines. He explained the 2016 was the lowest yielding vintage during his tenure, even lower than 1991. He also told us it was important to green harvest in 2017, as it was a big crop. He also said that a few makers tended to saignée in ’17, he did no saignée. He used the analogy that ‘if you do something bad to your body in your youth, you’ll pay the invoice later’, There won’t be ‘invoice paying’ down the track so far as his ‘17’s are concerned. They are stunning.

2017 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé Chambolle-Musigny: Pomegranate and cherry fruits are so direct and pure. This is fine and exquisitely balanced.

2017 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru: François describes Chambolle as having natural seduction and elegance. Case in point here with this wine. The malo is just finishing and it has an expressive nose of purple and red fruits and violets. It is full and sweet, with great balance and loads of mineral. One is left with the scent of red rose in the glass once the wine has been swallowed.

2017 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Amoureuses: This hadn’t started malo but is such a beautiful wine of finesse, delicacy and structure. It has a pure and perfumed nose of rose petals, red fruits and mineral. It is direct with a high tensile spine and possesses perfect proportion and balance.

As we moved in front of the Bonnes Mares barrels, an interesting topic of conversation ensued. We generally consider Bonnes Mares as part of Chambolle, which it is, but François believes that it has more in common with say Chambertin of Clos de Tart, because of its deep fruit profile and muscle. This is particularly so with the Bonnes Mares here off the red clay.

2017 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé Bonnes Mares, Grand Cru: This is meaty and darker than any of the other ‘17’s. It has a heart of black cherry and good volume in the mouth. It is rich, sweet and long and flexes its sinewy muscle at the end.

2017 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé Musigny Cuvée Vieilles Vignes, Grand Cru: Glistens like a ruby jewel. It has fresh, juicy red and black fruits. It is perfumed, has a delicate floral spice and fabulous intensity. It builds through the palate, fanning out on the finish and possesses considerable drive and authority. A wonderful wine in the making.

good to hear you survived your 2 week sojourn. Look forward to reading your missives.

'17 Rousseau Chambertin from barrel certainly was a fair way to start off my first visit to Burgundy!

Fabulous wine, bright, energetic, pretty and light yet complex - and the Beze was very good too, full of spicy goodness!

The '17’s we had sure looked good (and in both colours), but there were though enough cautious warnings from many others as to the overall quality of the vintage - but I will leave that tale for you to tell in time mate!

Word on the rue, was that Le Soufflot was the hottest new place in Burgundy. A restaurant that marks up Village wines 20 euros from cost and Grand Cru 50 euros deserves some attention, even if the food is not great. The food is excellent and there’s a real energy emanating from the kitchen. There’s no vintage depth on the wine list but there are a couple of hundred selections that you want to drink and pricing is excellent. There is one page of the trophy things, and you can buy one bottle only for the table. A very fair way of preserving the list without stupidly listing things and having them unavailable.

To commence, a bottle of 2014 Coche-Dury Bourgogne-Aligoté seasoned the palate. It is all preserved lemon, chalk, white peach and spice. It is direct, linear and persistent. As we were heading to Roulot after lunch for a visit, all ten at the table had the short, four course luncheon menu. It kicked off with a bowl of chopped champignons de Paris, with a runny egg and intensive mushroom emulsion. It was artistically presented and whilst good with young white, would have been superb with an aged white Burg. Our second bottle of white was a cracker. The 2014 Bernard Boisson-Vadot Meursault Les Chevalières has some smoky, mineral reduction. It is intense, with citrus fruits a plenty. The palate is dense and sappy and it finishes with chalky dry extract. It was superb with the second food offering. Cured maceral with celery and horseradish. The dish has a slight oiliness from the fish and the wine provided cut and counterpoint.

An excellent main course of braised chicken thigh, under a creamy mash was served with a ball of fired chicken meat on a BBQ sauce made from beetroot. Sounds weird, tasted divine. It went beautifully with a bottle of 2014 Domaine Mugneret-Gibourg Echezeaux, Grand Cru. As with so many ’14 reds, it is ready to play right now. There’s a highly perfumed nose of red currant, plum, black cherry and dried flowers. It is full, creamy and rich. The palate has good depth and a light airy feel against the gums. It has sweet tannins, a kiss on minerally acidity and great length. Just because the Mugneret disappeared so quickly, we ordered a 2014 Domaine Robert Groffier Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Amoureuses. It had an engaging nose of flora and red fruits. In the mouth it was creamy and voluminous but has superb detail. The finish was somewhat akin to sucking on a cherry stone and this cool wine has such lovely poise and persistence.

Dessert was an amalgam of dark and milk chocolate mousse, with some chocolate biscuit and nuts. We had just enough time to punch one bottle more in before meandering down the road to see Jean-Marc Roulot and thought a PYCM would be appropriate. The 2015 Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Garennes has a clean and pure nose of white peach and honeysuckle. There’s excellent shape in the mouth and a fruit-sweet heart. Buried deep in the flesh is some chalky structure and it kind of has build like red wine, in a very good way.

A half decent coffee and the making of two future bookings over the next week concluded our meal. The fact that Meursault, our home town in Burgundy, has this gem now is going to be very dangerous for us.

Jeremy,

Thank you for chronicling your visit as we are preparing for our first visit in July. Regarding, Le Soufflot, is that in Irancy?

J,

They have a restaurant in Irancy too, but this is their new digs in Meursault (the old Chez Richard site).

Cheers
Jeremy

Perfect. Many thanks for the prompt reply. We will be staying in Beaune for the first week of July. Are there a couple of other places you would recommend to eat? Any activities other than wine tasting (heresy, I know) that you recommend? I will be happy to reciprocate if you ever venture to our favorite stomping grounds in the Langhe where we will be in June.

Best regards,

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

Plenty of good places to eat in and around Beaune. Try Ma Cuisine, Les Tontons, Caves Madeleine, La Superb or Bissoh. Le Bout du Monde is a good wine bar.

I know of no other activities in Burgundy other than eating and drinking. Perhaps someone else can chime in?

Cheers
Jeremy

I think my wife walked around the town while I ate and drank?

So which one of those was the “trophy”? At least two qualify in my book

Jeremy, if I had known you were around! We were at le soufflot last week on monday. Their pricing policy is certainly welcome as I think many places in Burgundy have gotten vastly expensive for wines in the last 2 years.

From the 2017’s you’ve tasted, how would you describe the vintage in red and white? For red most vignerons compared to 2007 but I must admit I didn’t tast 2007 at this early stage so this is difficult for me to judge. I can say that the sappy fruit will make probably wines that will drink much easier than iether 15 or 16. For white we tasted much less, the wines were ripe like 15 but with more balance and acidity.

Cycling seems to be the new thing, especially thorough the vineyard roads…the locals hate it.

Definitely try to get a table at La Lune. Only 20 seats and you will need to reserve early to get a seat where you can watch the chef. One of the best meals I have had period.

Les Popiettes was a nice bistro.

Not Jeremy, but, for the reds: 2000.

Harder to say for the whites.

I am digressing from the subject of the thread - but biking is big. If you go a bit further up north, Dijon is a really neat town. Very walkable, friendly people, and interesting history. The square around the ducal palace in the evening is magical. In a somewhat different direction - the basilica in Vezelay looks very interesting. It was in my list of places to go to …but we never made it up there …

On a different note - thank you very much Jeremy for your very evocative posts. Very much enjoying this.

The Mugneret-Gibourg was off the trophy page Alan. A subsequent visit yielded a 2014 Dauvissat Le Clos off the trophy page at the princely sum of 70 euros.

Must have just missed you Kristof. William’s call of '00 for the reds is a good one. I think they are a lot better than '07. 2017 was a big crop and many growers did green harvest. What we tasted lacked no intensity, yet it is an easygoing, charming vintage in both colours. The whites are harder to peg. Perhaps similar to 2012 but with fresher acidity?

Thank you Kaushik.

The sort of descriptions we heard everywhere about the 2017’s was “airy, light, transparent, pure…”

2000 came to mind for the reds for sure, maybe with a bit more sweetness and precision, a slightly better, more focused version of 2000.

The wines certainly seemed that, lovely, pretty balanced wines - although our tasting sample was from makers right at the very top.

There was also a lot of caution from almost everyone that whilst there will be some great wines from '17, not everyone made good wines…still very early days though.

Good news was that '17 was finally a large harvest, and those in particular that green harvested and took care potentially made some good wines in good quantities.

Next time I’m there I plan to check out the aviation museum in Savigny-Lès-Beaune.

http://www.targeta.co.uk/savigny_les_beaune.htm

The same museum also has a collection of ~300 motorbikes manufactured between 1902 and 1960.