Haha…I agree! It wasn’t my fav. The fries with the Rav were MUCH better!
Sounds like fun, keep me posted if something like that comes up.
I eat both without judgement
Sort of like BBQ, which can elicit strong responses about style. Just happy to have a seat at the table.
Rav is fantastic, but make sure to give it plenty of time in a decanter. For me that is Rav rule nr 1 - always
interesting ideas. I agree with Greg K. Maybe because we both recommended Lafon. I would avoid the Coche probably . For me the price is not worth it anymore. If you want to spend big bucks look for an aged but post 2011 Jadot Chevalieres Demoiselle. Outstanding wine.
Why post 2011 just curious why not earlier (seems like you have a specific reason)
I do not get the impression that Jay is going to be eating lobster rolls.
I believe he is planning to drink a great white Burg with lobsters.
Not remotely the same thing.
Still trayf
Funny I’ve got two loan bottles of Coche Meursault in my cellar. A 19 and a 22 — you’re making it awfully hard to keep my hands off them. ![]()
Cullen Kevin John too…in the Burg front with lobster I’d be looking for Meursault Perrieres from any number of producers.
If I had known Jay was going to share the wine with the lobsters, I’d have suggested something cheaper.
I drank a bunch of the 22 in France in July and it’s a very approachable vintage for Coche, unlike the 20 which I think will turn out like the 89s in time but which would be pointless to open now.
Modern Coche divides opinions; some of my friends think the current wines are far below par of old Coche. I don’t love reduction, so the current style suits me brilliantly, as does the current trend in Burgundy (well, current as in the last 10 years at least) away from reduction.
My sister, a vegetarian, considers Peking Duck to be a vegetable.
I definitely enjoy reduction when it’s not overdone, but it’s not necessary for me and I enjoy a very broad range of styles. Coche hasn’t been reductive for a while (at least not consistently from vintage to vintage). I’m in the camp that they are still amazing wines, although my experience is from a pretty limited sample size.
My sense of White Burgundy’s current trend/direction is everyone other than d’Auvenay seems to be afraid of reduction and new oak, and I’d like to see some people explore that spectrum more. That said, Paul Pillot and Lamy-Caillat are my favorite producers at the moment and neither of them are particularly reductive and use relatively small amounts of new oak.
Raphael makes his wines in a distinctly non-reductive style; very often when people give “typical Coche reduction” notes on young Coche they’re either just reacting to the label (if you expect reduction from a wine, you’re going to find it) or reacting to the oak (which is easy to confuse with reduction in a wine’s youth). The rise in reduction in white Burgundy had a lot to do with the additional sulfur added to the wines in the 2000s to fight premox; I expect in many ways this was a bug rather than a feature. As some producers get more comfortable with DIAM they are reducing their use of sulfur, which leads to less reductive wines - Olivier Lamy is using less sulfur and the HDs now drink much better young than they did 5 years ago because of that.
I think oak usage in Burgundy is quite diverse at the moment actually, which makes it interesting! Some like Lafon, Grivault and Drouhin have never really wavered in their approach to new oak. Others are certainly not oak shy - including Lamy-Caillat and Paul Pillot, who may not use a lot of new oak but keep the wine on the lees far longer than most (used oak does not mean neutral oak). Others are experimenting with different types of oak - what Tino Kuban is doing with all of the Austrian oak on his cuvees is certainly interesting (I think of it as GG Burgundy) and there are others using Stockinger oak as well, like Antone le Petit de la Bigne on some of his lower end cuvees. PYCM has historically used a lot of oak on his higher end cuvees (and as he has lowered the amount of reduciton he has also lowered the toast - the banana flavors from some of the late 2000 Meursaults are long gone). William’s wines are 100% new oak. PvG only uses new oak (which I think works for his Batard give his preference for picking super early.) There are some producers who eschew oak entirely, though having gone through a number of bottles of Ente and a recent bottle of Charles Lachaux 2024 negoce Corton Charlemagne blind last month, it’s not where my tastes run.
Of course, for many producers it also varies for practical rather than stylistic reasons - 2017 and 2022 saw a lot more new oak used at some domaines because of how small the 2016 and 2021 vintages were, when new oak barrels purchased for the prior year sat empty.
For me, Sauternes and champagne are a better match, but then again I’ve never had a white burgundy😳
Do you also have thoughts on what wine would be a suitable substitute for how you imagine Rayas tastes? ![]()
Thanks for the detailed reply. A good reminder that PVG is a producer that I need to explore.
Any perspective on Lamy-Caillat, extended lees aging, and the reduction that the wines can sometimes show in youth? From what I understand Sebastien does not use much sulfur, so I would imagine it’s a combination of the extended lees aging / second winter in stainless / terrior, but it’s never consistent across the range. My most recent example would be the 2023 Saint Aubin which I found to be quite flinty with smoky mineral reduction, but the village Chassagbe-Montrachet drank a month later was distinctly not reduced.