A surprisingly small scale 2003 Burgundy

WINE TALK
1

Morning all,

I’ve just made a rather serendipitous discovery: a small-scale, quite beautiful 2003 Burgundy. If I may remind you, 2003 was incredibly hot all over Europe creating a lot of atypical, cooked and generally over-ripe wines. The Burgundies from this vintage that I have enjoyed up until now (Clos des Lambrays and de Courcel spring immediately to mind) do show the heat of the vintage and so are quite big wines. This was not true of tonight’s wine: Gevrey-Chambertin ‘Mes Favorites’ Vieilles Vignes 2003 from Alain Burguet.

If anyone is really interested the full note is on my site, but I’ll go over the important points here. The fruit character on this medium bodied wine was ripe and delicious but not the slightest bit cooked, it had a svelte tannic structure and brilliant harmony. What really impressed me was its restraint; there was nothing overly heavy or rich, nothing to burn your nose nor over-whelm your taste buds. I had to keep looking at the bottle to prove it was a 2003; I cannot think of another wine from this vintage which has been such a refined entity of sculpted beauty. And all this from a village level wine (albeit a village wine which is usually arse-bitingly good). I loved this wine and it loved me.

Cheers,
David.

2

Sounds great David. I have been cellaring my '03s but I am very curious to see how they age. Like you, I have always enjoyed the Lambrays (large scaled as it is).

3

2003s are actually amazingly diverse in style, contrary to the stereotype that they are all Australian fruit bombs squared (but those wines exist, too). The heat and drought caused the photosynthesis to stop in many vineyards, thereby resulting in lower alcohols than one would expect in many of the wines. Additionally, position of the vines, age, soil type, etc. all played major roles. Much of the press has focused on harvest date, but I found that there were both successful and unsuccessful wines among those who picked at the beginning and among those who picked late.

4

+2 on the Clos des Lambrays 03, wish I had backed up the truck, bought a handful, then discovered I had picked up the 02 instead…not a terrible mistake by any means, but I would certainly buy more 03 if the opportunity presented itself.

Thanks for the note on the GC David!

Dain