TN: 1993 Domaine Château De La Tour Clos Vougeot

WINE TALK
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  • 1993 Domaine Château De La Tour Clos Vougeot - France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Clos Vougeot Grand Cru (11/16/2016)
    Very savoury and very good. It smells of damp earth, pine needle sap, tar, leather and moss. In the mouth it is rich and powerful with plenty of meat and earth and flavours that are strewn with iron filings. There’s some brown spices and a suggestion of camphor. It is dense with plenty of chew. You get a tart cherry snap on the finish.

Posted from CellarTracker

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Nice note. Always wondered why this producer doesn’t get more attention.

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Thanks William. They are very old fashioned and take an age to come around but this '93 is starting to unfurl.

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Weren’t they considered kind of mediocre, at least back in the 80s?

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Haven’t tried any from the '80s, John, but in the '50s and '60s they made some great wines, and what they are producing now seems pretty solid.

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I’ve got an 09 I was gifted but haven’t touched it. just starting to get into burgs.

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They were an Accad client in the 80s, IIRC.

I had a 1961 Chevalier de Tastevinage selection from here that is a top five wine of my life. One of those wines I remember like it was yesterday, and it was 10 years ago.

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As I said, I haven’t followed them. But I’m aware of them because I ended up in their tasting room kind of by chance in 1983, probably just because they had a tasting room (rare in those days). I don’t remember the wines, but I dimly recall later learning that it wasn’t considered a top tier producer. Maybe things were better before and since.

Jasper Morris is generally positive, saying, “So far the domain has not created waves on the international scene, but perhaps that is just around the corner. Certainly Francois Labet and his team seem to be taking considerable pains to produce fine wines.” (Or is this just a British way of saying they’re trying but they’re not quite there yet?)

Morris’s map shows the domaine holding a good-sized plot at the upper reaches of CdV, a quite large plot midway up the slope on the northern edge and two smaller plots toward the bottom.