No One Knows

A great song by The Queens Of The Stone age, and a fact about our last bracket at Monday’s Table this week. Matty G hosted our look at Richebourg. Wines were all served blind, as they always are at Monday Table. We’d just looked at an excellent last bracket, ranked them and then were advised of the wines in the bracket. Unfortunately the Somm had mixed up the bottles after decanting and could not tell us which wine was which. I have added my notes with what I thought the wines were, but we will never know!

1996 Bruno Paillard Brut Millésimé Blanc de Blancs: The nose is all toast, biscuits and grilled nuts. The palate is rich, powerful and chalky. There’s plenty of complex bakery things and it finishes dry and long.

2004 Taittinger Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs Comtes de Champagne: Very toasty and loads of matchstick to the aroma. The palate is layered and creamy, with candied fruit flavours and a lick of mineral to the fine finish.

2007 Bouchard Père et Fils Chevalier-Montrachet, Grand Cru: Some apple and chalk. The apple looks bruised and other oxidative notes come to the fore. Quite flat in the mouth.

2011 Etienne Sauzet Chevalier-Montrachet, Grand Cru: Expressive nose of coconut ice, guava, white peach and vanilla. It is rich, layered and powerful, with good volume, detail and a fine, lingering finish, strewn with geological matter.

2014 Henri Boillot Chevalier-Montrachet, Grand Cru: There’s explosive white peach fruit tinged with aniseed and ginger spice. It is rich, sappy and deep, with an unctuous feel and length to burn.

2014 Etienne Sauzet Chevalier-Montrachet, Grand Cru: Has pure white peach, rockmelon and guava fruits. There’s plenty of saline minerality and it is intense, voluminous and possesses great build. It finishes with an energetic uptick of acidity and is very long.

2006 Domaine A.-F. Gros Richebourg, Grand Cru: A nose of fresh red berries and smoked meats. There’s a touch of underbrush development. It is rich and fleshy with good persistence.

1999 Domaine Anne Gros Richebourg, Grand Cru: Incredibly deep and youthful. It smells of sandalwood, black cherries, freshly grated ginger and dried flowers. It is dense and penetrating, with great power and precision. Length is imposing. Needs another two decades.

2008 Domaine Jean Grivot Richebourg, Grand Cru: Aromas of sarsaparilla, dark cherries, spiced plum and earth. It is full, with a gentle meatiness and a cool stoniness. It possesses a fresh acid spine and decent length.

2006 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Richebourg, Grand Cru: A very pretty nose of rose petals, blood plum and cherries. It is complex, fine, full and layered. At its core is sweet cherry, at the tale, tart cherry crunch. There’s plenty of mineral to the back-end.

2000 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Richebourg, Grand Cru: Wine of the night for mine, so youthful but in a terrific place. There’s so much floral spice to the aroma coupled with notes of sandalwood, raspberry, cherry and plum. The luscious, spice tinged flavours envelop the mouth and it has great presence and detail. It fans out on the finish, leaving an intoxicating mouth aroma once swallowed.

2000 Mongeard-Mugneret Richebourg, Grand Cru: There’s some smoked meats and a note of camphor mixing it up with dark fruits. The palate is rich, dense and creamy and it is a powerful wine with real presence.

1982 Charles Vienot Richebourg, Grand Cru: If it weren’t for some TCA this would have been really good I suspect. It had a very sweet core of fruit and good build.

1959 Henri de Villamont Richebourg, Grand Cru: Too much nutty aldehyde and volatility. Colour was good.

2010 Mongeard-Mugneret Richebourg, Grand Cru ??: Sweet, dense, full, rich and layered. There are black fruits, some sandalwood and a suggestion of root vegetables.

2005 Mongeard-Mugneret Richebourg, Grand Cru ??: A deep wine that is relatively shy on the nose. There’s a core of black cherry and good underlying mineral and earth.

2009 Thibault Liger-Belair Richebourg, Grand Cru ??: Intense black cherry fruit is tinged with floral spice. It is luscious and layered, with an underlying meatiness. For all of its flesh there is decent energy and good balance.

2005 Meo Camuzet Richebourg, Grand Cru??: A super-complex nose of rose petal, raspberry, black cherry and spice. It is highly perfumed and deeply pitched, but possesses great harmony and elegance. Length is supreme.

1999 Quinta do Noval Porto Vintage Nacional: A calm, even wine that took a little while to reveal its charms. There were chocolate and dried fruits and it had good freshness and detail. It had layers of flavour and finished with good precision. Flavours lingered for a long time.

2000 Quinta do Noval Porto Vintage: An outstanding standard Noval. Immediately expressive with rich blueberry and black cherry fruits. It is luscious and round, with good depth and punchy spirit. It drinks very well now but has plenty left in the tank.

Somms who regularly handle drc somehow messed up the decanters?? Wow!!

Lovely notes tho!

Nice notes. Love the precision. Sucks that there was a mixup in the wines, but you can hardly complain about the wines consumed. A dreamlike resume. Nice to not worry about consuming $30,000.00 of wine in a night! You run in rarefied circles…

Nice line up of wines, thanks for the notes

When you have wines like that, it doesn’t matter if anyone knows. They are all good…

Wow. Rest of the week must pale by comparison.

Just imagine if they had mixed it up with the Ports as well :wink:! I’ve had too much trouble with Bouchard 2007s - that vintage has been consistently advanced across a range of their wines. Odd, as I’ve had no troubles with '05, '04 and '08s.

What did you think of the Sauzet and Boillot '14 Chevalier head-to-head? From your note, I would assume I would give the nod to Sauzet.

And folks get indignant when others say they insist on handling their own wines when dining out … rolleyes

The somm probably just thought the whole lineup was excessibe.

Rauno,

Of the whites my clear winner was the '11 Sauzet, followed by the '14 Sauzet. I really like Sauzet when its on.

Best Regards
Jeremy

Most good Somms would have made it up, proposed the wines with confidence :slight_smile: Difficulty being that the 05 Mongeard and Meo could look very similar.
Great tasting/dinner.

Just what I was thinking Jerry.

So the wines with ?? noted were the botched blinds? That’s crazy… I’d have their heads! I would have poured all the wines together and let them taste the “Somm Cuvée”…and then inform them that that’s the tip for the bill! [oops.gif]

break the bottles into fine pieces and make the barefoot somms walk across them.

Just happy that I was the only one who picked the two DRC’s blind - unless the Somm mixed them up too!