'05 Barthod Chambolle Musigny Combottes-
Soaring nose of marinated black cherries. Wonderful, extremely pure, sappy blackcherry Chambolle fruit. Like many of the lower Chambolle vineyards this is more fruit-driven and meaty (like Gruenchers and Beaux Bruns) and less minerally when compared to the upper slopes. Beautiful pure winemaking and a very good wine but I wonder if it deserves the 1er designation.
'05 Dancer Meursault Perrieres-
The first bottle was horribly corked. The second seemed quite reserved and possibly knocked down with sulfur. With air it showed more but this was recorked and I will check again tomorrow. Judgment reserved.
'99 Dujac Echezeaux-
Like the '99 CdRoche, this is drinking great. Lots of ripe fruit and great stemmy complexity with some stiff acidity on the backend. This is delicious and will continue to improve.
What about Combottes makes you doubt the 1er designation? I think the only 05 Combottes I have is Dujac (could be wrong about that), and I haven’t had one yet.
D, you and Kevin are talking about two different Combottes vineyards- Ghislaine Barthod (and also Christophe Roumier, amongst others) have vines in Chambolle-Musigny “Combottes”, while Domaine Dujac has vines in Gevrey-Chambertin “Combottes”. Two very different premier crus of very different reputations- the Gevrey vineyard is considered amongst the very finest premier crus in the Cote de Nuits, and in the village, generally only Clos St. Jacques is considered superior to G-C “Combottes”. It lies on the slope in the band of grand crus that runs from Latricieres-Chambertin in Gevrey to Clos de la Roche in Morey St. Denis. There is some speculation that one of the primary reasons that G-C “Combottes” was not given grand cru status during the adoption of the AOC was that all of its owners lived in Morey at the time (and the AOC rules were apopted on a village by village basis- so the good folks of Gevrey saw no reason to add another grand cru to their neighbors in Morey, even if the vineyard lies in Gevrey). But the Gevrey Combottes also has a “combe” just behind it that tapers out down through the vineyard, making it decidedly cooler than most of the grand crus in this band (and also not draining as well in wet years), and this probably made more of a difference in the quality in the 1930s (when the AOC was accepted) than it does today, so there could have certainly been ample evidence that it did not deserve the same ranking as its neighbors, Latricieres and Clos de la Roche in those days.
Chambolle-Musigny “Combottes” on the other hand, lies further down the slope of premier crus in the village, and not in the very best section of the village, as the soils here are a tad deeper and less defined by their limestone element and consequently the wines are not often as racy in their expression of minerality, which so many of us value in the wines of Chambolle. But it does lie in the same line with the lower and larger section of Chambolle “Charmes”, which can be very good and very Chambolle (in terms of its very chalky expression of soil), so this section of the slope is not decidedly inferior. But the vineyard of Combottes (like Clos Prieur in Gevrey) has a top section that is premier cru and a lower section that is only entitled to “villages” status. I have not walked the vineyard, but I assume that the slope levels off further down in this vineyard, and hence the change in AOC status. But the Barthod Combottes, if memory serves me correctly, is younger vines and this may be one of the reasons it does not possess quite the same depth of her Beaux Bruns for instance, where the vines are in excess of sixty years of age. Christophe Roumier’s parcel of Combottes is also quite young vines. I would be inclined to see how the examples from these two proprietors evolve as the vines gain in age before thinking about whether or not the vineyard at the top of its slope deserves its premier cru status.
Thanks for the lesson! Very interesting. I thought that my Dujac Combottes were from Gevery, but then figured I was wrong when I read Kevin’s note. I don’t think I knew that C-M had a Combottes, too.
I brought the '96 Dujac Ech to a Burgundy dinner at 11 Madison last year and was shocked not just by how awesome it was but by how ready it was. A '96! Who’da thunk it?
I mentioned to Eric Rousseau that his wines and Dujac’s had that characteristic; he chuckled, and in agreeing noted that their respective ways of making wine are very different.
I don’t think I’d go that far. It’s true that they don’t “close” into a heap of tannin and acid but they can go through a pretty long period of boring primary fruit, which I consider unready.