William - if you click the producer profiles the St Aubin comes up in the article. I did not realize they had this. I missed your piece on the Caillerets - will check it out!
a++
a rovani review.
I have found the few Bizot wines I have tried to be “one note”. No complexity, good but boring wines. I thought these were too exprensive for what was a very everyday burgundy.
Looks to me like Neal may have conflated Lamy-Pillot and Lamy-Caillat…
William - yes. Looks like those were mixed up in the data base and is being amended. Shoot - I was hoping there for another wine from the Domaine!
Aha – the major critics learned that their most praised cult wines get out of reach for readers and therefore starting to promote the under the radar domains? As long as even those meet high demand and sky rocketing prices getting out of reach for the majority either. What´s next, Neal?
weygandt used to bring in Pascal Bouley. I remember a particularly excellent 1993 volnay clos de la barre.
I picked up some 2005s from Bassins but don’t recall any recent vintages there.
I’ve only opened Bitouzet-Prieur Bourgognes - one red and one white. The white was very impressive out of the bottle; the red was dumb initially, but kept growing over a several-day drinking period and, in the end, was also very impressive. I’d buy a batch of both, were they available locally at the low-end NY prices I can see.
I have a small stash of '05 Chenes and Taillepieds, as well as 10 Caillerets, and opened a Cailleret young (-ish, in 2015) for learning purposes - my CT note is posted below. Stern is a good descriptor. Planning to let my remaining bottles lie quietly for quite some time yet.
“Normally I’d let these bottles sit for 10 years, but many of the '10’s have been so good young that I rolled the dice. The texture is pleasantly silky, body medium+; there’s good pinot fruit, intense, primary and a bit rowdy, and a good finish. Good balance. Based on some '12 B-Z bourgonge I drank last year, I’d imagine that this is very traditionally-made Volnay that is now showing a small fraction of what it will have to say in 10 or 15 years. But the wine is not shut down, and exploration at this point is still rewarding.”
These days “under the radar” means I can buy the wines in normal amounts for the restaurant or privately. Cheap is never an option, but I would categorize anything non-expensive as a win.
It used to be the case that I could buy the wines freely for several years before others started to pick them up and thus made them allocated (PYCM, Antoine Jobard and De Montille used to be freely available for quite some time), nowadays the producer is usually allocated the year after I discovered them. Either I’m getting slower or everyone else is getting faster.
There are a bunch of really young producers that I think will be on the radar fairly soon. I will have more to say on the subject by the end of the week about producers like Armand Heitz of Heitz Lochardet, Thibaud Clerget of Domaine Yvonne Clerget and Camille Thiriet of Maison Thiriet
I also like prieur and clerget.
Morten,
in pre internet times it was easy to buy good wine even from top producers. Today with the modern technology its pretty simple to create huge demand within minutes. I once made the mistake to recommend a good restaurant with a deep wine list online. The result was an almost empty cellar when I returned to that restaurant some weeks later. BTW. The restaurant was locally known for its fine cellar for decades and it was no problem to have really mature Bordeaux and Burgundy. Its over now. If you recommend an under radar producer you must be aware that its not unlikely he will be sold out next time. Or that the prices are no longer what they used to be for years.
I didn’t know a thing about Bizot when I first tasted this wine, but was impressed enough to buy 2 bottles (and I hardly ever spend this much on a bottle). When I popped the next one, I had to go back and buy 2 more. It is stunning stuff. I was lucky that the shop I found it at apparently had an excellent price (I would not be buying at $300 either).
Armand Heitz of Heitz Lochardet
Yup, I’m on it. Their les gruyaches is great value - for Burgundy, and one can still get decent amounts.
I dislike the article about Beaune in the latest WoFW, though. Soon enough those will be hard to find as well.
While all of this is going on and I find it hard to keep enough Chassagne and Puligny in stock I’m pondering new paths to take. One is going the path of American wine as we now have access to amazing value from “over there”. When I compare top California with similar quality Burgundy (surprisingly to me the chardonnays impress me the most) there’s a lot of great wines to choose from.
Another path for me is Loire. Top cabernet franc and chenin blanc go really well with our food (and I
love them) and at that level it teases out my inner terroir nerd as well as being amazing value.