In my earlier ‘Emperor has no clothes’ thread on ERP, you posted
Originally Posted by Kevin Harvey
The criticism that I trust has the following attributes:
tasted for many years and watched the evolution of wine from barrel into bottle and through maturity.
tastes the reviewed wines in barrel, again on release and as many times as possible through evolution in bottle (many critics feel that the in-barrel tasting is more revealing than the in-bottle performance on release)
tastes non-blind (because the history of the terroir’s development is critical information for projecting future drinking)
tastes the regions wines extensively and frequently including very old examples
The taster has similar style preference to my own or at least describes the style of a wine in detail
Based on my experience with the 2006 white burgundies (tasted 50+ mostly grand crus) at least 70% in blind, it is clear to me that this is not a good vintage in white burgundy. However, I find out per Paul Hana’s thread that the vintage was received well by Allen. My question is one, what is your take on the 2006 white burgundies? Two, if you do not agree with Allen, what is the reason for needing to taste non blind.
John,
What is your take on the 06 whites? I find most of the wines cloying due to the lack of acidity and atypical a la the 03 red burg but worse.
Kevin – It depends very much on whose wines you are tasting. There are good white Burgundies out there in 2006, and a lot of problematic ones, too. Especially at Meursault, where I heard stories of wines with 17% alcohol.
In our GJE 2006 white burgs event at Villa D’Este in last November, we tasted the following wines. I found most wines flabby and cloying as they lack acidity. As Paul Hana said, I liked Chevalier Montrachets a lot better than the other plots.
My top five favorite wines were;
Jacques Prieur Montrachet
Bouchard Père & Fils Montrachet
Bouchard Père & Fils Corton-charlemagne
Drouhin Montrachet
Alex Gambal Corton-charlemagne
I was able to correctly guess Montrachet vs CC 78% of the time and actual vineyard 72%. Theoretically the worst rate would have been 45% as we knew the number of wines from each vineyards.
Alex Gambal Corton Charlemagne
Bouchard Chevalier Montrachet
Bachelet-Monnot Batard Montrachet
Bonneau du Martray Corton Charlemagne
Marc Colin Montrachet
Champy Corton Charlemagne
Bouchard Montrachet
Bruno Clair Corton Charlemagne
Dom. Chevalier Corton Charlemagne
J. Prieur Montrachet
Dom. Charlemagne Corton Charlemagne
Bouchard Corton Charlemagne
Dom. Chapuis Corton Charlemagne
J. Prieur Corton Charlemagne
Compte Senard Corton Charlemagne
Dom. Faiveley Corton Charlemagne
Drouhin Montrachet
Folin Arbelet Corton Charlemagne
Villamont Corton Charlemagne
Dubreuil-Fontaine Corton Charlemagne
Dom. Maratray Dubreuil Corton Charlemagne
Tollot-Beaut Corton Charlemagne
Coche-Dury Corton Charlemagne
P. Javilier Corton Charlemagne
Jadot Montrachet
Pierre Marey Corton Charlemagne
Ramonet Bienvenue Batard Montrachet
O. Leflaive Montrachet
H. Boillot Corton Charlemagne
Rollin Pere & Fils Corton Charlemagne
Jadot Corton Charlemagne
Drouhin Corton Charlemagne
Gaston & Pierre Ravaut Corton Charlemagne
(? sorry I missed the name) Corton Charlemagne
Ramonet Batard Montrachet
Pierre Andre Corton Charlemagne
O. Leflaive Corton Charlemagne
Claude,
Even in a relatively poor vintage, there can be some exceptional wines. What is your overall/general assessment of the vintage? IMHO, below average to poor.
I think in characteristics of vintage, Kevin. 2006 is powerful and rich, often times going to heavy and overblown. There are producers whose wines I would be very happy to drink, but even from the successful producers, when I tasted their 2006s last fall after having tasted their 2007s, the 2006s suffered in comparison. On the other hand, as high as I am on the 2007 whites (and I am), I do know people whose palates I respect who did not like them – especially some people in the British trade.
The 2006 vintage for white Burgundy is not great : many wines taste forward , rich , powerful but with a lack of minerality and not much acidity .
Of course , there are many exceptions but overall , this is not great.
HOWEVER , when I tasted the 1992’s from barrel and early on in the bottle , I thought the same thing : not my cup of tea for the same reasons .
Well , the best 1992’s turned out to be my all time favorite white wines . Domaine Leflaive is an excellent example . So I’m going to gamble heavily and leave these wines alone for at least 10 years… I could be left with creme caramel but I hope for another 1992 !
With a few notable exceptions, I was not a fan at all of the 2006 white Burgundies. I found the wines generally to be ripe, buxom and often quite candied in their fruit components, with low acids and often excessively high alcohol levels. The better examples were ripe and tropical in a somewhat softer version of 1992 and were passable for short term drinking, and the more prevelant examples were hot, candied, soft and heavy-handed. It was funny, because prior to my arrival in Burgundy to taste the 2006s for the first time in November of 2007, the reputation of the vintage was that it was a top quality year for the whites and a rather inconsistent and middling year for the reds. I found just the opposite. The problem for white producers was that the sugars simply soared in the last week- often rising by as much as 2% potential alcohol in a matter of a few days, and a lot of vignerons were caught unprepared. The ban de vendange was called later than what would have been optimal as well, and it was only the growers who said “screw this” and went out an picked anyway that had the most success. At that time, my favorite '06s in the Cote de Beaune were Comtes Lafon and Arnaud Ente (both of whom picked ahead of the ban de vendange), as well as Domaine Raveneau in Chablis.
I have not been back to the wines “en masse” since tasting them in March of 2008, other than an odd bottle or two, as I did not buy any of the wines for my cellar, given the style of the vintage and what to my palate was their inferior quality. Of the few that I have had, a couple of 2006 Raveneaus were more tropical and blurry than I had hoped, given how well they performed out of barrel, and a Chassagne premier cru from Alexandre Moreau was over the top tropical and a tad hot on the backend. Given that both of these producers were amongst my favorites out of barrel, I can only imagine what has happened with the 2006s from estates that I did not particularly like out of the blocks. I would be happy to send you my two barrel tasting reports on the vintage if you would like more detail (just email me at: jbgilman@ix.netcom.com), but in general I am in complete agreement with you that this is a poor year for white Burgundy.
Herwig,
I do hope that I am totally wrong about the 06 as I love the 92 Leflaives as well as other producer’s 92s. I find it interesting that also in the 92s I find some wines very Californiaesque including Leroys, ie really thick juice and in particular the wines from Meursault.
John,
I appreciate your input. I have two more questions for you. One, as I asked to Claude what is your take on 2007 whites and reds? Also, does barrel tasting of white burgundies provide reasonably accurate assessment in vintages like this where the wine is lush and fat without the balancing acidity?
Kevin,
I do not like '06 whites much at all. It does seem that those that picked earlier (as reported by Burghound) are better (ie less sweet, tropical, hot etc).
That said, I really don’t understand the relevance to blind tasting. Handicapping young burgundy is exceptionally difficult and this is true no matter how a wine is tasted. There are no Burgundy pundits with a perfect score.
The advantage to non-blind reviews is that it is possible to factor the ability of the terroir to improve with age as well as the producer’s track record. Of course, even that is no guarantee.
Blind reviews of young Burgundy often rank village wines above Grand Crus from the same producers. This happens because the GCs can be typically tight and inexpressive when young, but when the wines are opened at maturity these sort of rankings rarely hold. In fact, they seem essentially random.
I bet you have seen how difficult it is to discern the real complexity (ie terroir) of young Bordeaux when blind tasted? Because of this, young wines are often ranked on concentration and accessibility but these traits can prove to be quite temporary as the oak element evolves.
Vintage generalizations are always a bit problematic in Burgundy, but with the understanding that we are talking primarily about the potential of the vintage as realized through the vignerons who I most respect, I think that 2007 is one of the finest young white Burgundy vintages that I have ever tasted. I love the cut, snap and vibrancy in the wines from their racy acidity, and they seem at the outset to have terrific mid-palate depth to buffer their acids. The underlying expression of terroir is scintillating in the best wines of the vintage. It is certainly to my palate the most exciting vintage of white Burgundy since the 1996s- which were absolutely stellar at the outset. But we are talking about the potential of the wines here in a perfect world, and with the spectre of premox still not solved by any stretch of the imagination IMO, and it may well be that many of the 2007s will never reach their full potential because of this scourge. And given the very racy, almost tensile nature of many of the best 2007 whites, they could prove to be more than a little “zingy” if they have to be drunk up early on in their evolutions because of premox issues.
When it comes to the 2007 reds, it is a very good vintage that I like very much and which I think will age very well, while at the same time providing more early pleasure than either 2005 or 2006 reds. It is the product of a generally cool, long growing season, and so it is very different in profile from most recent “top quality” vintages that have exhibited more overt ripeness. The 2007 reds offer stunning transparency down to their underlying terroir, plush, velvety fruit components of impressive purity, and really pretty moderate structural elements. But the best wines are so beautifully balanced that I expect them to easily keep very well for at least 25-30 years, despite their precociousness. Stylistically they are like a hypothetical blend of the 1985s and 1987s, if this makes any sense.
As to your question about whether or not handicapping white Burgundy out of the barrel is any more difficult than other types of wines, I cannot see any inherent reason why barrel tasting white Burgundies would be any less accurate than other wines. In the case of the 2006 whites, it was pretty evident to me that plenty of the wines were over the top and too soft to be any good as a white Burgundy vintage- many were quite overtly like young California chardonnay in their aromatic and flavor profiles, as well as their more buxom and softer structures- and I was surprised by how much positive commentary I saw in some places about the wines. But the same thing was true of the 2005 whites, which I again found rather inconsistent and not particularly impressive in broad terms, and yet there was lots of positive comments about these wines as well. So I guess that a lot of people look for different things in white Burgundy than I do, as I much preferred the 2004 whites to either the 2005s or 2006s.
Kevin,
I got the impression that Allen liked this vintage very much and he did taste the wines in bottle.
My point regarding non blind is that despite tasting the wines non blind, Allen seems to found the 2006, a good vintage, if so this is nothing more than repeating what the producers informed at the time of barrel tasting as John informed us. However, I could be wrong as how Allen assessed the vintage so I am more than happy to be corrected.
In regards to blind reviews, I was able to correctly guess Montrachet vs CC 78% of the time and actual vineyard 72% based where theoretically the worst rate would have been 45% as we knew the number of wines from each vineyard so it may be able to assess the wines blind abit more than what you may think.
If you think that
Is there a reason to even bother with the critics rating of young Burgundies? Why not just buy the wines based on vintage and producer?
Based on my past GJE participation, I have rated Lafite, Latour, Mouton and Pavie high at least 80% of the time. I also gave Reignac 96 pts and thought it was pinot like or pinot and gave 03 Gruaud Larose 100 pts so I am not claiming that I am always consistent. However, if you give me 8 hours to go through 40 wines single blind, I should be able to give you very accurate assessment in terms of ‘the real complexity’.
Kevin – The wines are very racy, as John notes. There is good aciidty, but it is a fine acidity. If you are familier with 2007 Germans, it is the same kind of acidity – not surprising, since I have noticed thorugh the year that the acid expression in Germany and Burgundy is generally the same in a given vintage.
John – I’d take issue here, and Burgundy producers with whom I have discussed this issue have agreed with me. Tasting red Burgundy in barrel, you’re tasting the wine that will be bottled – there is nothing more that can be done to change it (of course, it may be fined, filtered, and/or racked before it is bottled). With white wines, that is not the case, and there is quite a bit of fiddling that can be done before it is finally bottled. I have often noted disparities between the way whites tasted from bottle and what I tasted from barrel; not the case with the reds. For that reason, I tell my readers that while I have full confidence in the red wines I taste from cask, the whites from cask are still a work in progress.
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BTW, I like Aubert.