This it whats it looks like:
love the Roulot Zaltos too
"So off we went, back to La Cagouille at 10pm.
We ordered some Razor Clams and Langoustines to go with our wine of choice. These Langoustines were briny, meaty deliciousness. Sucked every morsel out of those puppies. "
Love La Cagouille. The razor clams are a must with Chablis. Must stop in June.
Looks like a brilliant trip Charlie.
We have been eating at La Cagouille every year for over a decade. Wonderful seafood, prepared simply and you can always get a well-priced white or two to wash it down with.
Le Bon Georges is perhaps our favourite place to eat in Paris. Such hospitable service and great food and wine.
seems to be an imgur issue when it sends over to here, I’ve had the issue pop up when i was preparing the post. Apparently a couple refreshes syncs it up
great trip. thanks for the write-up. BTW what until you have a Caillard blanc!
Well done Fu. It keeps getting better.
Your late night “fourth meal” forays remind me of the frontispiece to Hunter Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” It’s an abridged quote from Samuel Johnson:
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
![[highfive.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/d/db21b9263a9105e51f6f8b11e61dd4de095611f9.gif "highfive"){kind=small}
Those old Chartreuse from Tarragona are very special. I’m happy that you had the opportunity to taste one, as they are becoming quite rare. I love old Chartreuse.
Day 4 - we drink red wine
We wake early to head off to Morey St Denis for a tasting with Jeremy Seysses at Domaine Dujac.
Always a treat to meet with Jeremy and of course this time was no different. He has so much knowledge to give and he gives it generously and honestly. You learn the inner workings of a domaine, the interactions between domaines - how they learn/evolve, vintages, winemaking. You can spend countless hours just listening and learning.
They had just bottled a series of reds for 2017 and only a few left in barrel to finish off in a couple of weeks. We tasted both. I don’t know if it’s just me, but the wines seem to be getting prettier as the vintages go on. There’s still the dark fruit, but there’s less extraction than in the mid 2000s. Jeremy commented on how they’ve been adapting their wine making due to the warmer vintages from how they used to make wine to now. It really shows. The 2017 are beautiful light fruited wines with nice depth. The 2017 Bonnes Mares (which was bottled) was showing surprisingly well. For a vineyard that’s “never open” I was really shocked. Just kinda showing to me how much understanding they have of the vineyard and how to work with the vintage.
Also learning about the impact of hail in 2016 and how Dujac “mostly” survived. The analogy he made was someone standing against a wall and getting shot at and basically a bullet outline of their body is against a wall and they only got lightly marked. The vines that weren’t hit by hail did not produce a large crop like the ones that were hit by hail.
Jeremy also opened a 95 Bonnes Mares - Unfortunately a bit marred on the nose, brown sugar and earthiness showing more advanced than it should. But the palate was still dense and bonnes-marish.
He also opened a 2002 Combettes which was ripe, juicy and delightful to drink. Full of fleshy fruit but still holding some stuffing in reserve.
We bid goodbye to Jeremy and headed off to lunch!
First we took a quick tour of the vineyards.
Walked up to view La Romanee and survey an area of land probably worth more than anywhere else in France. Staring at La Romanee, Romanee Conti, La Tache, Richebourg & Romanee St Vivant.
For lunch we stopped in at L’Hotel for some roast chicken
I don’t really get roast chicken at restaurants cause … well… it’s almost always dry. Unfortunately this 120e chicken was no different. Breast was dry on the chicken I shared with Tyler. Dark meat was dry on the chicken Gaurav and Ryan shared. I’m not even sure how you have dry dark meat and tender white meat in a roast chicken. But there was a really tasty beef ravioli I had as a starter. The french fries and salad were also delicious.
After lunch we headed to Volnay to visit Domaine Lafarge
Frederic visited us at the door. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted so fast yet so thoroughly and still learned a whole ton. Efficiency, I like it. We were down the elevator shaft to the 1300s cellar and back up within 45 minutes. But within that span we barrel tasted every wine he produced other than the Meursalt and Aigrots Blanc, we even tasted the Bojo! On top of that we also had the 2011 Clos des Chenes and 13 Volnay (sharing out of Coravin!)
Some firsts for me, I have never had their Bourgogne Passetoutgrain l’exception. But the wine is FREAKING AWESOME. Blend of 50/50 gamay/pinot noir. Such great fruit and purity. In general the 2017s were absolutely bonkers at Lafarge. I know out of barrel everything seems a bit fresher before getting hit with sulfur when bottled, but the wines were really delicious, with a great red fruit set and nice spine of acid. If I were to pick two, the Caillerets and Clos des Chenes were absolute keepers.
Peep the white mold action in the old part of the cellars! Ryan courageously squished it with his finger.
Next up… we went across the street to taste at Domaine Yvon Clerget. Except… when i stood there at the door, Papa Clerget came out and said “pommard” to me. I looked at him very confused and mentioned I have an appointment with Thibaud (which I butchered the pronunciation and Ryan had to yell out the right name). FORTUNATELY Thibaud pulled up and told us to follow him to Pommard. Since our appointment was put together so last second, we had no clue the cellar was somewhere else. Ha. Damn you google maps.
Clerget is the new wonderkid of Burgundy/Volnay. Worked with Henri Boillot and Hudelot-Noellat before taking over the domaine in 2015 for his first vintage.
We had the opportunity to taste all 10 of the wines being made at the Domaine thanks to the good fortunate of following after the Burghound who just did his tasting there before lunch. I sent a message to Allen shortly after, thanking him for his timing. The 2017s are completely bottled.
He does one white wine, the meursault chevalieres which in 17 was a rich fruit forward dense wine of yellow fruit. A mouthfull and quite delicious.
The standouts for me were the Carelle Sous la Chapelle, Caillerets, Champans (only in magnum), CLos du Verseuil and the Clos Vougeot. The Sous la Chapelle is this gorgeous bright red fruited wine. The Cailleret had a similar fruit set but deeper darker back end. The Champans was round, fleshy, and soft on the mouthfeel. The Clos du Verseuil is a 180 to the other wines, darker, deeper, more concentration of dark fruit but with great weight and structure. The old vines Clos Vougeot located near the chateau was one of the better Clos Vougeot I could remember in recent memory.
Very interesting to contrast Clerget and Lafarge. Lafarge obviously has decades (hell centuries) of history of winemaking at a high high level so the wines show at a really high level. Clerget has come out of the gate strong, the volnays don’t have quite the depth of Lafarge and sparkle but are really tasty considering it’s his 3rd vintage. Hopefully he keeps pushing, spending time in the vineyard and keeps tweaking to make even greater wine than he already is.
After the tasting we gathered Gaurav (who had a conference call back in the Airbnb) and Tyler’s bags (his wife demanded him home), grabbed Colin (who had his own tastings set up after dujac) and set forth to Dijon.
We made a quick pit stop at Caves Carriere in Dijon. I’ve been buying wine from them and they invited us to visit. Really gorgeous wine store. Clearly lots of money was put into the investment of the facility as it’s modern and gorgeous. Wine bar at the front and a large communal space in the back
While there we drank an INCREDIBLE magnum of 2004 Ramonet Morgeot and a 2016 PYCM Ancegnieres. The PYCM was kinda what I expected from the vintage, riper a little clunkier, hit of oak but still tasty. The Ramonet was bonkers. Spearmint, fresh lillies and white fruit on the nose for days. The palate was as fresh, round sweet white fruit and this ethereal clean mint on the palate. Man it was good!
We dropped off Tyler and headed over to Colin’s friend’s restaurant Hu Po. We were pretty beat down by french food and when Colin mentioned Chinese food, we were all in agreement. Tsing Tao and Schezeaun food seemed to be in order.
If you’re there, the “schezeaun chicken” (sorry I don’t know the english name) which is fried chicken chunks spiced up is so good, we ended up ordering two of them. The eggplant was delicious and so were the pig intestines. We asked the chef to cook up a soup and he put together a winter melon, smoked ham, vermicelli soup that hit the spot.
Afterwards we met back up with Icy and headed over to Chez Bruno in Dijon. Bruno was in good form today. He remembered Colin and Icy from prior visits and welcomed us with open arms.
On tap was 2015 Domaine Duroche Griotte Chambertin. Colin’s eyes lit up when he saw it on the list. He imports Duroche into Singapore but has only ever been able to get his hands on one bottle and had to pay over $1000 USD for it. When I say the parcel is tiny, it’s probably one of the smallest productions in burgundy. They make less than 90 liters of the wine each vintage from a .019HA parcel. For 2015 only 80 bottles were made.
I was stunned by the wine. I wasn’t expecting to ever meet a 2015 that was this lithe and elegant. It still had great shiny vibrant fruit and a long finish but the wine itself was so clean and soft it’s almost indescribable.
We also put back a 2000 Chateau De Fonsalette - syrah - Gotta say, the wine wasn’t quite for me. A bit too polished, fruit a bit too dusty.
As we were finishing up a truffle forager came in to sell Bruno some goods. Quite the delicious box of goodies. A parting perfume for our ride home.
End day 4
Fu’king millenials are killing wine!
Gotta ask… did Tyler spend more time
A. On an airplane
B. In bed / suffering from plague
C. Actually seeing something in Paris/Burgundy.
???
Poor guy.
Option C, but A+B might = C. ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
glad you are only there 6 days. The motherland wouldn’t survive a much longer visit. Love the notes and pix.
surprise twist, day 6 is Ryan and I leaving for the airport at 5:15am.
No wife? Man, she’ll be pissed when you get home!
Don’t care for the Instagram stuff but good notes, as usual.
Instagram/Imgur are the easiest way to show high res photos with albums. And I’ve typed up a bunch of info on IG already so easy to cut and paste.
My wife has no interest in Burgundy. Fortunately none of our wives do!
Nice notes - Duroché has also been a recent discovery of mine. Had a great visit last year - they have changed a lot of the last years, and the estate seems to be on the right track.
My first trip to France was in 1983. I was a couple of weeks shy of turning 29. Over a 3 week period, my friend and I consistently drank 2 bottles with lunch and 3 with dinner. On the same day. No way could I do that now, but I can certainly identify with what Charlie did on this trip!
I gotta say. We were pretty weak. Never had 1btl per person at any meal. Mostly was 1 btl per 2. Our level of restraint was impressive
1 bottle per 2 ppl at 6 restaurants a day adds up though!