TN: Les Saint Georgesez

WINE TALK
1

1999 Faiveley NSG Les Saint Georges - dark, tannic, meaty, kalamata olive. At times bitter. Better with - frankly good with - food; where it shows more dark plummy fruit and savoriness and spice. Big wine. Good, but rustic, and needs decades.

1995 D. Laurent NSG Les Saint Georges - Brilliant. Succulent, resolved , with just the right touch of tannic structure. Explosive aromatics of violets, truffle, and earth, along with mixed red to dark plum fruit that got darker with air. Ripe, rich, sappy. Very long in the mouth, slightly sweet and intensely truffled. Glorious wine - in my top 3 for the year so far. I remember reading that this bottling is pretty much straight Chevillon in this vintage and I can believe it!

1990 Giacosa Barbarasco (this was not reserva) - Coravined. Completely uninteresting. Simple red tart cherry fruit, bitter tannin. Maybe a hint of florals. Like a decent Chianti. Dumped.

1998 Pensees de Lafleur - Coravined. Green! Green tobacco, green pepper, juxtaposed against chocolatey plum fruit. Really odd; like a Chinon made a baby with a Pomerol. Not great, but interesting enough.

2

Thanks for your TNs David, love those NSG LSGs.

Cheers, Howard

3

Presuming that the “Coravined” wines were impregnated with the needle some time in the past are you surprised at the odd and lacklustre tasting notes.

4

No, theses were first time coravinings. I was surprised at how odd the coeavined bottles showed but certainly don’t ascribe it to the coravin. In fact, we started out by coravining the Laurent and when we realized how great it was we popped the cork.

5

Then why add the detail that they were “coravined” as it should not alter the tasting note ?

6

Because they were coravined.

7

Thanks for the notes David. I have some of the 2002 Faiveley NSG LSG buried in the cellar, and it looks like it should stay right where it is.

8

Here’s my note on the Laurent:

  • 1995 Dominique Laurent Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru Les Saint Georges - France, Burgundy, Côte de Nuits, Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru (7/16/2014)
    A winner. This doesn’t have a ton of fruit left, but somehow manages to feel fresh and powerful even though it’s well into middle age. There’s marzipan, white chocolate, lavender, black cherry, and mushroom all vying for attention on the nose. After ~90 minutes of air, the fruit ripens, the palate fills out and softens, and the acid gets a bit livelier. Impeccable balance. (92 pts.)

Posted from CellarTracker

The Giacosa was the 1990 Barbaresco Gallina di Neive white label. I shared David’s views on both of the Coravin wines.

9

I’ve had the Chevillon LSG in that vintage and it’s an excellent wine, not surprised the Laurent would show well.

10

So reading up on Lafleur this morning, I learned something I did not know:

“Lafleur has more complex flavours and demands much longer ageing than many Pomerols, perhaps partly because of its unusually high proportion of aromatic Cabernet Franc vines (50 per cent on the ground, typically 40 per cent in the finished wine) with the more usual luscious Merlot.”

Well, bully for Dan’s and my tasting skills.

11

Hmm!. Barely ripe vintage, plenty of Cab Franc and second tier fruit which I suspect was rejected because the grapes were not ripe. Not exactly a formula for a successful wine.

12

98 Petit Cheval (also a cab franc-heavy right banker) was similarly pretty blah.

13

Wasn’t that the era when Laurent was using 200% new oak?

14

This was much better than the '98 Petit Cheval, Corey. It was very green and tasted Loire-like, but it was a nice, interesting, and weird wine. The Petit Cheval was just plain bad.

1998 was barely ripe, Mark? I thought it was seen as one of the top Right Bank vintages in recent memory.

15

IIRC, generally yes, but, its more complicated than that when it comes to the NSG LSG. Interestingly, the cork was completely unbranded.

16

Sorry misread it. Dyslexia rusels. I thought it was 1988, and the note is pretty close to mine for the La Pensee '88. And yes, I love 1998 right bank wines.

17

I think Laurent only gave the 200% new oak treatment to grand crus.

18

After I posted, I was thinking the same thing.

And perhaps the unmarked cork implies the elevage (and bottling) was at the underlying producer.

19

The wine is/was from Chevillon, Laurent’s close neighbor. He bought/buys the LSG in casks (chooses which ones)…and carts them down the street for the elevage. Exactly when in the process, I don’t know, but they’re gone by the time of the spring following the harvest. (You can see where they were by that time.)

Elevage is/was Laurent’s “thing” and most of what he adds to the mix…other than good sourcing and a fat checkbook.