Fass Selections has been promoting this wine and producer for a little bit now, and there seems to be a paucity of notes out there. I can independently verify that this wine did not change my life. I should have understood what I was reading to be sales copy.
2023 Maison Pierre Brisset Bourgogne Cuvée Gabrius - France, Burgundy, Bourgogne (5/2/2026)
Best on day 2 for me. High hopes from this with the hype from Lyle Fass. Keith Levenberg calls the reds Leroy and whites Coche...
Black tea, kiss of spice, proper cherry on the nose. Palate shows sweet deep pomegranate, cherry, ripe strawberry all with a relatively cool tone. Stays medium-light with mineral inflected lift from acidity with supple tannins that have some grip. Finish shows some of that cool toned pure cherry and mineral.
Cali drinker's Burg. Riper than I prefer but stays somewhat light and not gloopy. At $50+ there's competition from Burg and other regions.
Yes, there is always the sales copy discount factor. But to be fair, I don’t think LF promoted this as ‘life-changing’. That’s a very high bar and also very idiosyncratic, depending on one’s life thus far!
I went and looked at the mailer for this wine and his most concrete claim was about the QPR being outstanding. Sounds like you would quibble with that too.
I haven’t been tempted to buy any of the Brisset wines.
I’ve had one really good bottle of this base cuvee (different vintage) and multiple others (yet another vintage) that were clearly bad bottles/off. I don’t buy from LF anymore partly because there’s no recourse for off bottles, new or old.
Very fair and yes I agree he did not. Maybe this came across as too scathing but I’m trying to communicate that these are perfectly good wines and slightly riper in style, but not paradigm changing Burg (to me).
I read somewhere that the 19 of this was very good.
I’ve been on the Fass selections email list for a few years but stopped ordering a couple years ago. Mostly, I didn’t like the overall experience of dealing with shipping and coordinating that with my regular life.
But, I’ve also been really put off by the growing over-the-top nature of his hype emails. EVERY SINGLE WINE is a “spiritual explosion of inner mouth aromas, silk couture gown on a structure of pure monolithic granite, made by a monkish Vigneron who’s made THE LEAP”… ugghh. Its just gotten totally ridiculous. I feel like I finally saw through his sales when he started hyping Martin Woods wines in Oregon. Not because they are bad. To the contrary, they are lovely fantastic wines. But he treats them like they are the be all, end all of Oregon wine that HE DISCOVERED. Meanwhile far too many producers in Oregon are on the same if not higher level like Goodfellow, Walter Scott, Violin, Morgen Long, and on and on.
I will say though, some of his German selections are really very good and excellent values. I have really enjoyed the Stefan Steinmetz wines and the Martin Mullen rieslings. I wish he would sell/distribute to restaurants.
Yeah I’m right there with you. Very grateful for Lyle introducing me to Steinmetz, Mueller, and Weltner, but the cons far outpaced the pros of staying on the list anymore.
I appreciate the over-the-topness of Lyle’s emails - nothing new about that going back at least a decade, sort of a Bizarro Suckling Effect - Suckling ratings but with the diametrically opposite palate…
But I talked to Keith Levenberg, who has forgotten more about Burgundy than I am likely to ever know, and who I have the pleasure of drinking with on occasion, and his respect for Brisset is real. I picked up a 2018 Brisset Rouge du Dessus at auction and popped it for a crew of seasoned Burg experts and everyone was duly impressed. I can’t say I’ve had the basic Bourgogne Rouge/Gabrius much, so hard to comment on quality there.
The Rouge du Dessus had that je ne sais quoi depth and aromatic profile that reminded me of the first time I was given a Jouan wine to taste.
So I am on the Brisset wagon. Lyle’s purple prose will rub some the wrong way sure, but Brisset did not exist in the US before Lyle so I’m quite glad he is bringing it in.
For some additional context - Lyle is known to get very excited about the wines he likes and he can write sales hype with the best of them. As I mentioned in the little blurb I wrote for Brisset, he never actually asked me to do a Brisset blurb. He’d actually asked to quote something I’d written on some other wine and I told him he should have me write the sales pitch for Brisset instead because he wasn’t hyping the wines enough! He passed on it the first time because he was already selling out his Brisset allocations but eventually caved. It’s true the style has loads of ripe fruit. I think I made that pretty clear in my blurb. I went out on a limb there fully aware I’ll look like a fool in 25 years if I’m wrong. I’m putting my money where my mouth is and have about 100 bottles of them cellared and am still buying. I think they are stunning. That said, AOC Bourgogne is AOC Bourgogne. Don’t expect life-changing wine from an AOC Bourgogne. I recommend the Nuits Thorey as the starter bottle to see if this producer is for you. If you can appreciate deep, powerful Burgundies I can’t imagine not loving it. If you’re looking for, say, another Fourrier, then maybe not. P.S. I find Martin Woods quite worthy of the hype, too.
