Marcassin 2006 Pinot Mailer

WINE TALK
21

Wow, what a letter. I hope some of the burgheads chime in with additional perspective…

[popcorn.gif]

22

That was quite an interesting read. Thanks for posting the link, Dennis. Whenever someone denigrates a competitor to elevate their own ego…it usually has the opposite effect and makes that person seem petty and jealous. Marcassin has a strong and loyal following, why resort to this type of advertisement? Plus, all the stories revolving around their poor CS just adds fuel to the fire. Whatever.

What are these pinots going for, anyway? Just curious.

23

If you have to ask… [cheers.gif] Sorry, but I couldn’t resist. No idea, I’m not on the list, but I think they start around $125 IIRC (I’m sure I’ll be corrected). And, for the record, I have had a few bottles of Marcassin pinot and I was not impressed. Just not my thing.

24

Must have been a bad bottle. It was purchased through a very reputable retailer, not not winery direct. It certainly couldn’t have been indicative of the whole production run.

I recall there was some major variability in the '99 pinot run.

25

Depending on how you look at it, it’s either astoundingly arrogant and ignorant or utterly entertaining that they argue from principles of agronomy that all Burgundy is inherently faulty.

26

Alex…thanks for asking.

Here are my observations regarding the letter’s Note No. 2 and No. 5.

Needlesss to say that I agree the price which was quoted there re RC and LT. It is also common knowledge that 1983 is a controversal vintage for DRC. Regarding the comments of bottle varietion chez DRC. It is nothing new.

Here is what Hugh Johnson said in : ( Simon & Schuster 1991 ) :Modern Encyclopedia of Wine. Page 120 :

****Romanèe - Conti - A Great Burgundy Estate.

All the conudrums of wine come to a head at this extraordinary property. It has been accepted for at least three centuries that wine of inimitable style and fascination comes from one four-and-a-half acre patch of hill, and different wine, marginally but consistently less fascinating, from the sites around it. Romanèe-Conti sounds like a super-successful public relations exercise. In some way it is even organized as one. But there is no trick.

One such a small scale, and with millionaires eager for every drop, it is possible to practise total perfectionism. Without the soil and the site the opportunity would not be there; without the laborious pursuit of perfection it would be lost. A great vineyard like this is largely man-made. The practice in the days of the eighteen-century Prince de Conti, who gave it his name, was to bring fresh loam up from the pastures of the Saone valley in wagonloads to give new life to the soil. Ironically, today the authorities would forbid so much as a bucketful from outside the appellation. Does this condemn the great vineyard to a gradual decline ?

The co-proprietors of the Domain today are Mme Bize-Leroy and M. Aubert de Villaine, whose home is at Bouzeron near Chagny ( where he makes particular good Aligote ). Their policy is to delay picking until the grapes are consummately ripe, running the gauntlet of the autumn storms and the risk of rot, simply rejecting all the grapes that have succumbed. The proportion of stems put in the vat depends on the season. Fermentation is exceptionally long: from three weeks to even a full month. All the wine is mature in new barrels every year. There is a minimum of racking and filtration. It is indeed, as Mme Bize-Leory says, the grapes that do it.

As the prices of the Domain’s wines are so spectacularly high, one expects to find them not only exception in character but in perfect condition. They are essentially wines for very long bottle-ageing. What is surprising in that they often show sign of instability. It is almost the hallmark of ¨D.R.C.¨ wines that they are instantly recognizable by their exotic opulence, yet rarely identical from bottle to bottle. Too often bottles are in frankly poor condition. *****


Repeat :

It is almost the hallmark of ¨D.R.C.¨ wines that they are instantly recognizable by their exotic opulence, yet rarely identical from bottle to bottle. Too often bottles are in frankly poor condition.

Here is what I was given to understand. Since around viantge 1995, DRC started to bottle their wines by mini-assemblages of 5 or 6 barrels.

Regarding the comments re Fermentor variation and Picking varition, needless to say, it is understandable as these are facts of a vigeron’s life in Burugndy - be it DRC or Domaine ( Anee ) Leflavie.

Please remember we do not live in a perfect world…trust the judgement of your fav wine producers in Burgundy when you buy your Burgundy wines…is my answer to comment expressed in No. iv of Note 5.

Regarding to comment expressed in No. v of Note 5 and despite the fact this is a note by Mr. Parker, all Burgheads know : balance is the key and that there are 2 kinds of ripeness or PN grwon in Burgundy. It is also understandable why Parker said that 06 LT tasted …* underripenss *.

My main questions are :

(1) what is the purpose of do a comparative tasting ( = side-by-side ) of a Marcassin 06 with LT 06 ? and

(2) since Parker was invited to that tasting, why not Meadows ? [wink.gif] neener

27

Jay, I assume that this letter convinced you to sell all your Burgundies and use the funds to buy California Pinot. Correct? [bleh.gif]

28

[bleh.gif] Is that helpful?

29

Helen Turley and John Wetlaufer have arrived at the enviable position in life where they can say and do practically anything they want and the money keeps rolling in, but Wetlaufer, in particular, should probably say less and let their wines do the talking, for better or worse. There’s such a thing as being too much in love with the sound of your own voice; he provides a textbook example of how not to promote your own product.

Parker has always had the hots for Helen Turley, and IMO continues to embarrass himself with all this repetitive Wine
Goddess stuff; you halfway expect him to lay down on the floor and pee on himself.

30

[snort.gif]

31

Now that would be fascinating!!

32

33

Oh my god that release letter is ridiculous!! No doubt the staff of the spectator, uncle bob and these two are having an orgiastic back patting session on the sonoma coast as we speak… on top of the price, nonexistent customer relations, and protracted release schedule, it is now acceptable to openly bash other producers to shill your juice. WOW… can you say out of touch!!

There are those that would say helen deserves a lot of credit for a 15 year stylistic wrong turn in california, who knows.

34

I gather that they truly believe they have some new viticultural insights to enlighten the rest of the winemaking community with, but it’s hard to take seriously a lecture on how everyone else is doing it wrong and suffers from underripeness, when that producer’s wines taste like the Mollydooker of the pinot world.

I will allow for the possibility that Marcassin is trying to be avant garde and show that pinot done in an entirely different style could have different merits (and I haven’t had their top bottlings so I might even like one one day), but a release letter that slags other winemakers like DRC and Randall Grahm, hits at Tom Watson’s fashion choices (?!?) and then pretty much the whole region of Burgundy is trying too hard. It’s not classy, it’s not charming and personal, it’s just smacks of insecurity and a need to compensate for one’s own shortcomings - and all the Parker and WS namedropping only drives that point home all the more. Sad.

35

I first heard about this mailer over at Bill Nanson’s Burgundy Forum. It seems very self-serving. That aside, I pulled out a 2003 Martinelli Blue Slide Ridge PN from my severely overbought Martinelli mailing list period to “make sure” I still didn’t like this style. This wine was a bret bomb zinfandel with a somewhat slimy flat texture on the tongue. A lowly negoce Michel Picard 2006 St. Aubin 1er poured alongside was much more to my palate. And I like zinfandel, but not when it masquerades as pinot noir. Anybody wanna buy some Martinelli? [swearing.gif]

36

John,
Your post prompted me to open an '06 Three Sisters on Thursday for my twice a month wine group that drinks everything blind. I knew what the wine was (it was the only Chardonnay), but no one else did. Expecting to dislike it, I was very pleasantly surprised. Oak that needs integration, but otherwise a very nice bottle of California Chardonnay. Considerably lighter on its feet than the '06 Auberts that I’ve tasted. For what its worth, everyone else in the group liked it, too, and finished the bottle pretty quickly. We drank 3 flights of 2001 California Cabernets (Shafer, Bond Melbury, Grace, Merus, Seavey, Abreu, and Sloan). None of the Cabs except SHS was finished. I have no opinion about the '06 Marcassin Pinots, not having tasted them.

37

I’m confused… I thought only France produced defective wines.

38

Which is what John Wetlaufer’s new release newsletter screed would suggest. And he’s got RP to back him up. Then perhaps the Marcassin “style” is really superior to the pinot noir that passes for “burgundy” these days. [snort.gif]

39

Ergo, anyone who disagrees is a defective taster.

40

Or a member of the AFWE and thus just pretending to dislike them to lure innocent newbies into drinking think overly acidic wine.