In the name of ‘research’, I opened a bevy of 09 Olivier Bernstein wines at Bibou in Philly on Wednesday night. I was joined by six friends for a Pierre Calmels feast of seven courses; man, he nailed each course that night…
As an opener:
2010 Goisot Aligote- Bright and classical aligote aromas and flavors, with good defining cut, and even good back end minerality; it gained in depth and cut with more air. I love this stuff…
2000 Dom Perignon- Rex brought this one, quite a treat. It was still a puppy, but its breed was apparent. Champagne rarely wows me, but this was pretty good.
Olivier’s wines, all 2009s:
Corton Charlie: Pale stone-yellow color; white flowers, citrus, stones on the nose, into a wine more of cool structure than flesh, based on its extract and focused acidity. Its robe of fruit was rich enough, but its mineral core is driving. Impressive, and people at the table were quite taken with it, and with its evolution in glass later in the meal.
Gevrey villages: from Epointures and Carougeot, some nice villages parcels. In the Gevrey universe for sure, with its signature depth, meatiness, and earthen/animal qualities. Moderately fine tannin, good punch. But showing next to the following wines, a simple villages, and an entry to the house red style.
Gevrey 1er Cazetiers: a whole other level of intensity and focus in every aspect. strikingly intense and cool floral aromas, with a whiff of earth. Powerful and suave, with good muscle tone to its fruit; deliciously meaty, with good weight and length. This continued to develop nicely, and was often the most open and striking aromatically of the entire flight.
Clos de la Roche: More taut aromatically, with lurking stoniness peeking through. At once, explosive and fine in the mouth, with a long tension driven finish, leaving me salivating. The floral length on the finish is wonderful. It started tight, and slowly unfurled; the tension and balance of the wine makes me think it will age for a long, long time.
Update: Saturday, four days later: Still aromatically a bit shy, in the mouth the intense mineral quality is still driving but now allows more of the prettiness of the dark cherry fruit to sing. I love it when the flavor impact of wine is like a solid dissolving and expanding, not from heaviness, but from the continuing sizzle of flavors, as fruit, acid, and mineral dance. This is wowzers fantastic today…
Mazis Chambertin: A more powerful, more extroverted, dense violet aroma. In the mouth, the same deep violet quality, with meat juices, an impressive intensity, that is then lifted and driven by a long filigree mineral finish. This was fantastic. It continued to gain in weight and depth in the glass.
Clos de Beze: Damn, this was good off the bat. I was a bit hypnotized by the filigree dance of my palate stained with extract. Powerful fruit of good weight is held perfectly taut by the core, and the interplay is mesmerizing. The inner mouth perfume factor is off the charts. Me likey.
Overall, I was particularly impressed with the muscle tone of the wines. These wines seemed built like athletes, without excess weight, and powerful. I think that they will age very, very well. They were all (eh, villages) outstanding. For immediate gratification, it seemed that people responded best to the Cazetiers, Mazis, Corton Charlie (and the Goisot). For the ‘holy shit’ factor, the Beze and Mazis seemed to be the humdingers, with the Roche next in line.
That’s two ‘holy shits’, four humdingers and a whoopie doopie.
Voila the new scoring system for top class Burgundy.