2003 Volnay "Caillerets" (Chandon de Briailles)

Been dabbling in some 2003 Burgs lately as I’m looking for some ready to drink quaffers.
Unfortunately, I ran into this dog.

2003 Volnay “Caillerets” (Chandon de Briailles)
Medium red with some onion skin at edge.
Ripe nose of cassis and menthol.
Very lean, thin, unripe fruits. Really dried up. Totally out of character for a 2003!
Perhaps a bad bottle.
Since this producer tends to make a leaner style of Burg I really thought 2003 would be a good year to try their Volnay.
Perhaps they panicked about unaccustomed high sugars and picked too early with unripe phenolics.
At any rate, totally not recommended! [bleh.gif]

TTT

not jumping on the band wagon, really, but i truly have not had a single good 03 red burg.

They are out there…

TTT

I do not represent Chandon de Briailles, but have tasted there several times and admire them.

Until recently, the wines were made rather formulaically. It worked great in normal years, not so much in outlier vintages.

There are changes being instituted, with more account taken of vintage conditions in both vineyard treatment and winemaking. I have had half a dozen of their wines in '03 and they range from excellent to poor (I have not had the Volnay Caillerets). I think in the future we will see more consistency in quality as the parcels and lots are treated individually according to conditions.

Dan Kravitz

I have tasted many fine bottles from this Domaine over the years.
They are usually in a leaner, mineral laden style which requires years of aging to tame.

This bottle was one foul ball! [scratch.gif]

TTT

2003 De Villaine Mercurey Montots is really good, possibly the most complex and interesting California Pinot Noir I’ve ever had :slight_smile:

I’m generally a fan of CdB’s Pernand wines, but they are real vins de gard; they take a lot of time to ‘un-lean.’ Could the 03 Cailleret’s problems be attributed to the wine being shut down.

Tangentially related, has anyone here dabbled in CdB’s 09s yet?

I’ve tasted three dozen or so 2003 Burgs.
NONE of them are closed down. They were all fruit forward.
This is simply a lean, mean, dry, fruitless wine that had to be picked before way before it should have.

I guess it is possible I had a bad bottle, but I’m not going to try another one [head-bang.gif]

TTT

This has been a less-than-successful wine for Chandon des Briailles for some time. I forget the vintage, it might have been the 2005, but if you look up the Burghound review you’ll see the domaine has acknowledged this and said they were reassessing the winemaking approach for the site, I believe after concluding it did not seem to respond well to stem inclusion. So in the case of this particular wine it might not be so simple as a 2003 issue.

Actually, the 2007 version is a nice wine. (As are many of the 2007 Volnays)…

TTT