If I Open A 2009 P. Damoy Clos de Beze.......

Should I experience at this point in time: a primary, but enjoyable experience, a wine that is totally closed, something in between, or the waste of a potentially superb bottle of wine? Thanks.

If you open that wine now, you’ll cause disruptions in fabric of space time and the universe as we know it will cease to exist.

If you open that wine now, you will experience a sudden urge to embrace life, warts and all.

You never know, but I would expect it to be totally closed. The Damoy wines are not particular charmers in their youth.

My guess:

93 not hard to find, costs less, drinks well.

I probably should have approached this differently. It was a note by Alan awhile back about the 99 that prompted my interest. Winesearcher gave 0 hits on the 93. I have 4 bottles of the 09 available to me, good provenance and good price. I was considering getting 1 as a test bottle before buying the other 3. I’m now thinking that would simply be a waste and need to decide to get them or not. Any ideas on the earliest date to drink that would not be a complete waste of time and wine? Thanks.

Michael, honestly, aside from generalisations about the producer’s style/track record/vineyard/vintage etc., nobody can really answer your question in a meaningful way. Why don’t you just buy them and try one? That will give you the best possible idea on the wine’s progress (and, more importantly, the progress of the specific bottles you have bought) and you will probably also have a much clearer idea on what you want to do with the remaining three. That is normally what I do when I have to make this kind of decision. As ever when it comes to wine, there is an element of risk/uncertainty involved, but, to quote a great Italian winemaker, I prefer to make my own mistakes as opposed to relying on someone else to make them for me :slight_smile:

As I said, that was my original intent. You may be a wealthy man but for me to drop a couple of c-notes on an experiment that turned out to be shut down completely, would be quite depressing.

Oh, not at all. I have the same problem as you. All I said was, more often than not, my solution is to just bite the bullet (and perhaps live to regret it :slight_smile:. That simple.
This brings to mind an old quote I came across somewhere, something along the lines of “if you can’t afford a whole case, it’s not a wine you can afford”. I don’t necessarily live by this rule, but I often think there might be more than a grain of truth in it :slight_smile:

Your concern about the bottling possibly being shut down makes sense to me. There’s a tasting note for this in CT, written last month, that describes it as quite open and enjoyable. So I’d say open away!

Plus the CT note in written in French, so you have that going for you :slight_smile:

interesting. I much prefer to learn from the mistakes of others.

+1

Go for it. 2009 have rarely disappointed for me and if anything, they have gained elegance in the last couple of years.

I say grab all four and try one. I think it will definitely be a young pup, but I haven’t had anything from 09 that I have found completely forbidding and unapproachable, and I’m in the camp that finds they have shed their baby fat and become more what I like in Burgundy (though I never fell into the “oh, scary ripe!” category, either).

I snagged the last 10 Chambertin I had after I saw where current releases were supposedly going to be priced. Yikes. You’ll likely be able to recover your money if you decide you don’t like what you tasted.

This echos my experience…and to the comment regarding case purchases. I might be weird , but I never buy cases of anything and lately just one bottle to taste and move on to the next producer/village/climat

The 06 VV is unpleasant right now. All structure.

How clever of you :slight_smile:

Though it will doubtless still be too young, I would buy one and see if I like it. (I personally don’t buy anything I’m not interested in drinking.) The 09’s definitely have been approachable, as others have said; my go to vintage when I want something by a producer, but don’t have any other bottlings yet ready to drink.