This Friday I turned 30, so the girlfriend and I went on a small extended weekend getaway where I had found a restaurant with an insane wine list with even more insane prices…
Budget was a bit tight for us after purchasing our first house back in April and also just coming back from 3 weeks of summer vacation, so I “only” got these 2 bottles…
2019 Lamy-Caillat Chassagne-Montrachet - France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chassagne-Montrachet (25-08-2023)
First bottle of my 30th birthday celebration. About €89 restaurant purchase.
My first Lamy-Caillat and I definitely understand the hype. I would never pay the insane auctions price (over €400) for this, but I can see why Lamy-Caillat is going off.
Restrained and slight reductive nose at this young stage. Roasted popcorn kernel, slight oak, crushed flint, cold butter, lemon, green apple, white flowers and a touch of yellow stone fruits.
Palate showed a high and electric acidity with a creamy texture. Such an amazing balance between the elegant citrus notes, green apple and mirabelle while also punching you with cold butter, oak, white flowers, lemon curd and a deep complexity paired with a chalky minerality. Such a layered wine that keeps on giving.
This is such an insane level for a Village wine and it punches way above that - My score might be a bit inflated of how well this drinks for a Village and the fact it was only €89, but it is highly deserved for such an amazing wine and producer. (95 points)
This is pure and simple just greatness. PYCM has really hit an absolute bullseye in the 2018-vintage. There's nothing warm, flabby or acidity-lacking with this!
The nose surprised me greatly at first, because there wasn't this textbook extreme reduction like so many wines from PYCM have. This was soft, elegant and felt so inviting. The tension and energy shoot right into the nose. This feels so pure and playful. Citrus fruits, green apple, quince, light oak, butter, roasted nuts, crushed stone and some baking spices.
Now the palate was the true star of this wine... My God. There's something to this wine that I can only describe as completeness. The acidity was lazersharp, electric, tense and an absolute energy charge. Lemon juice, lime juice, green apple and greengage. Then comes this amazing creaminess, depth and complexity from pickled lemon, grapefruit, citrus zest, Mirabelle, white and yellow flowers, quince, toasted oak, churned butter, melon and some green banana. A chalky minerality to die for that binds it all together. There's a balance in this that I haven't had before in a still wine.
The best Burgundy I've had so far and also the best and highest-rated still wine I've had at this point. Only champagnes have surpassed this for me. Also: Les Perrières should seriously be upgraded to Grand Cru. Meursault deserves it. (97 points)
Thank you! Unfortunately no champagne yet as I wasn’t allowed to bring my own bottle to the restaurant… So the Pierre Peters Monsieur Victor will have to wait to the coming weekend!
Yes, nice notes–thanks and thanks for posting. The only '18 PYCM I own is his Bourgogne Au Bout de Monde and that’s been showing well also.
I hope the rest of the weekend was as much fun as the wines
I’m a big fan of PYCM, and totally hear you on the reduction being pulled back in recent years. I have to admit its a bit disappointing for me, as I used to really enjoy that. I think there is a thread somewhere on here about how this was an intentional shift in style. Somewhere around the 2017 or 2018 vintage I think?
I’m curious about what appears to be nearly the same word with two different o’s and slightly different order of the letters. And Google says they both essentially mean the same thing.
Seems like a lovely evening. I was not a big fan of the PYCM style in the 2000s; a friend used to open Perreires from the late 2000s on a semi-regular basis and I found them fairly easily to call blind and not to my taste - a lot of reduction and tropical oak. But I think they’ve become a lot more restrained in the last decade; the 2017s were lovely when I last had them (especially the grand crus) and we had a 2014 Perrieres this weekend that had little reduction and not as much oak as I expected.
The Lamy Caillat wines are great - they have a slight tangerine note that I quite like.
For an Average Joe like me, drinking these two bottles with a combined market value of almost €1,000, I really consider them monsters… I have almost nothing like them in my ~300 bottle cellar, so it’s very special for me getting to try wines like this!
