Dined at Jojo tonight with Pierre Henry Gagey, president of Louis Jadot and a few other retailer/restauranteur people. I was sandwiched between Ned Benedict (former Burg buyer of Zachys) and Daniel Johnes, so the conversation was interesting.
Jadot is doing a tour of dinners to help celebrate their 150th Anniversary. I love many of the wines that Jadot produces. The quality there is extraordinary given the amount og wine produced and is a testament to the consummate professional, Jacques Lardiere, their winemaker of 40 years.
Not a lot of wines tonight, but some very impressive ones. The first btl of 1979 Chevalier Demoiselles was OUTRAGEOUS and blew away the 1997 version.
1993 Corton Pougets was very good. 1983 Amoureuses not so good.
1985 Beaune Clos des Ursules was divine, while the 1959 Beaune Theurons was interesting (FYI the first btl was corked).
The food to match was excellent. My first time at Jojo (Jean Georges first restaurant in Manhattan) but I may go back soon.
The site will be up at the end of this week. It is an amazing wine collection being produced for charity by some of the great Domaines of Burgundy…you are going to want to see this…
I can’t speak for Ned but I am sure Ned is not at Zachy’s as to the same reason I am not at Chambers. High end wine purchasing has taken a humongous hit in NYC. It has not been talked about much but it has gone down huge. I sold a lot of high end wine to clients at CSW and once that business dried up in September it has yet to recover to the levels it was before when any desirable wine at any price could be sold to almost anybody. Those were some serious wine retail days. The whales have retreated and might be extinct…not such a bad thing either if you ask me because selling high end wine to very rich people, something that kind of just happened to me, was never really what I wanted to do in this whole crazy wine thing. Selling high-end wine was not all I did, but it’s what fed me for sure and put a roof over my head. I got much more pleasure and interest selling geeked out Rieslings, Loire, low-end Burg and Beaujolais.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jacques a month or so ago at a small private dinner with a number of Jadot wines. Clos Vougeot 1969, Chambertin Clos de Beze 1985, Chevalier-Demoiselles 1985 and Clos des Ursules 1988 and 2006 were all terrific. I don’t have a lot of notes on Jadot wines, but clearly that needs to change.
Dan, the site is up now as far as I can tell. It looks like an amazing project. I’d considering it, as the price (including the charity premium) is definitely affordable. Getting it to the United States is the problem.
I am in the know and Jadot wines have never done it for me. Note: I do not drink them but have tasted a ton. Good, acceptable but there is much more exciting Burgundy out there.
Musigny is academic at best with the output and Roumier (academic production too), Mugnier, Drouhin and Vogue I would consider better and in another class.
Also the oak is sometimes too much for me as on some wines it sticks out and others it doesn’t. Other times there is not enough fruit for the amount of tannin.
The whites have great finesse but lack the energy I look for. Maybe acidity?
I agree he is a great producer across a wide range of appellations, but I would not put him on that exalted level. Jacques Lardiere and Gagey are great guys and great ambassadors for the region. I just have never been a big fan of the wines. Your mileage does vary.
It’s nice to have serious wine talk on a BB. It’s been way too long.
Outside of Clos des Ursules, they don’t take hors classe in any top red appellation that I can think of. Perhaps Chapelle-Chambertin with that old vine holding. Among the other top Jadot wines (Clos St. Jacques, Musginy, Amoureuses, etc.) I can think of another producer whose wine I would rather own. Not that I would be unhappy to own the Jadot renditions.
I like the whites (outside of their recent and disastrous tendency to oxidize), but again, there are other wines I would much rather own.
I’ve had quite a few Jadots in the last few months. I like them a lot, but I suspect that they are quite a lot different, and probably better, from the late 90s onwards. Certainly 99 CSJ and Boudots,01 Clos Vougeot, and 02 Cazetiers and Suchots have seemed to me quite outstanding recently though I’m no particular judge of young wines and don’t really approve of drinking them.Older Jadots are always lovely warm drinks which often seem to lack the last ounce of definition though I except recent Volnay Santenots 83 and particularly knockout Clos Des Ursules 69. I have a Corton Pougets 1980 lined up for consumption this week.
I must confess that I have not tasted enough of the Jadot “high end” stuff to really add much to that aspect of the conversation. The 03 CSJ I had recently was good but needs more time. The 95 Demoiselles was oxidized beyond belief, but I may open another bottle in the next few weeks. The 95 Clos Vougeot was very good in a vaccuum but I do not have the exposure to enough Grand Cru to really know where it ranks.
To me, the value in Jadot is being able to discuss such a wide variety of wines, all at what I’d consider a very good level. Few in Burgundy can match the breadth of their labels and I am generally confident that whether I open a village wine or a Grand Cru, it is going to be a quality wine. Maybe not top of class, but a good wine. I look at Jadot the same way I look at Bouchard and Drouhin. I do not expect top of the class wines from them. Sometimes you get outstanding, top notch efforts. But you get consistent quality across the Burgundy board.
I haven’t had a lot of Jadot wines but a 96’ Clos St Denis earlier this year was utterly tasty with grand cru finish, finesse and stuffing. I wish I could find more as a retailer found a bottle in the back and saved it for me… I do own some 05’s and will see how they turn out 15+ years from now…
I was at same dinner, and agree, but also would add the 89 Folatieres as terrific (and Jacques is an amazing resource).
Some of the wines might seem to push the extraction limit young, but they seem to age well. Maybe not the pinnacle of their appellations, but most well above average, and not normally especially pricey.
I have never had old Jadot, but, for instance, the 1998 Musigny, tasted last year [at age 10] drank like a barrel sample - just thick and dull and impenetrable and not giving anything at all - it felt like it might need another 40 or 50 years to start developing secondary notes [with tertiary notes emerging circa 2098?].
I’m not sure how you evaluate something like that - if Lardiere has really been at Jadot for 40 years, then it seems like even now, his early wines [say, his 1971s] might not be quite ready yet.
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