TN: Heaps of Burgundy, red and white (Vougeraie, Bouchard p&f, Fèvre, Defaix, Ramonet, Derain, Mikulski, Lamy etc.)

WINE TALK
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Thanks, Jayson. [cheers.gif]

22

Otto, I’d just like to say I’d love to have dinner with you… I’ll bring lovely stuff from my home turf and you show me the door to Narnia. I read your entire post with the utmost pleasure.

I’m also glad 1) I’m not the only one who somehow finds that a nose can be ‘sweet’ , as subjective and vague as this might be in a TN, and 2) you can enjoy a bottle of Burgundy for less than 100€.

23

As soon as I visit Portugal or you visit Finland and there’s a free slot in the calendar, I’m all for it!

To me, a nose can easily be “dry” or “sweet” as much as the taste can be. And the taste can be also “dry” while technically sweet (for example dessert wines that have been cellared for ages so they lose their sweetness but not their sugar) or “sweet” while technically dry (many jammy, overripe fruit bombs). Also the nose can suggest lots of ripeness/sweetness, yet the wine might turn out to be bone-dry and austere on the palate - or vice versa! There’s a ton of different combinations of dry and sweet - and not forgetting all the shades of grey in-between.

And yes, there are lots of terrific Burgundy to be had for just 15-30€. Under 15€ is getting pretty difficult - unless you count Beaujolais in. I noticed there are a few 2014 white Burgundies in Os Goliardos selection - while I don’t know anything about them, they seemed like wines where I would start my journey from. Can’t remember a bottle of 2014 white Burgundy that would’ve disappointed me.

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Let’s hope normality in travel returns soon. I’m dying to meet up with other wine folk again.

I’m OK with paying up to 30€ for more casual drinking and up to 100€ for more age worthy, cellaring stuff (as much as I’d prefer a bit less), since I’m blessed to get enough free wine as it is, but it seems like the Village/1er Cru I keep hearing great things about over here are all above that in their respective price categories, and it’s hard to judge QPR without experience.

I’ll give you a concrete example from my reality: I’d rather spend the 80-100€ that a bottle of Reserva from Cortes de Cima costs rather than spend it on their less expensive (though very competent) wines, since I only manage to really enjoy potent, oaky, jammy Alentejo reds when they have a complexity that complements those characteristics in other ways. The 2012 Reserva was stunning, and I’m really itching to get the 2003, since that was an absurdly hot year in Portugal (we were martyred with the worst forest fires of the decade) and I’m very curious to see how a complex wine which must have had the structure of a chocolate fondant has developed for the past 17 years. For less expensive Alentejo drinking I would rather turn to António Maçanita’s many creative and fresh endeavours, as he’s been doing there what Dirk Niepoort has been doing in the Douro.

At the same time, knowing that the Goliardos guys have tasted everything they sell is a tremendous boon to my confidence, and they’re reasonably well stocked with white Burgundy at the moment (almost all of which Mâcon, which I’m unsure if, like Beaujolais or Chablis, has its own distinct profile).