TNs: Friday evening mostly Burgs and a de Montille or two

WINE TALK
1

Friday night at Mike and Cathy’s place. As always wonderful and generous hosts. A few wines with a delicious dinner. Great company, and some wines we all enjoyed.

2004 Pierre Gimonnet Champagne Special Club
Pale gold. Fine fizz. White floral aromas with lees and autolysis richness. Lemon meringue. On palate this has good weight, racy and chalky acidity and a mid palate that speaks of green apple, honeyed lemon and a layered structure. Finishes with lip-smacking acidity. Nice precision and weight.

1995 Josmeyer Riesling Hengst Vendanges Tardives
Mature and golden. Lemon confit, red apples, herbal infusion, rich and layered. Autumnal character. Rich texture and quite viscous but this finishes dry. Some botrytis richness as it evokes honeycomb and mandarin. Very long acid drop character. Very satisfying.
2010 Blain-Gagnard Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Caillerets
Very fragrant with acacia and a touch of aniseed. On palate this has great texture and viscosity, white stone fruit and a good backbone of acidity. It has freshness and weight.

2008 Henri Boillot Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Clos de la Mouchère
Tight with white florals and minerality. Develops a fresh and minty character as it opens. White stone fruit. Searing acidity and salinity (which has drinkers thinking Chablis and Grand Cru). Showing the 08 power with great a backbone of acidity but with enough fruit to match. On the second day, this has softened very lightly. Great potential.
2000 Louis Jadot Bâtard-Montrachet
Bright gold, showing some age. Beautiful aromas of yellow florals, nuts, and stone fruits. On palate, this has beautiful viscous texture, with perfect balance of yellow fruit and acidity. Very long and elegant finish. Stunning wine with its layered texture, precision and perfect balance. At its peak.

2007 Domaine Armand Rousseau Père et Fils Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Cazetiers
Fragrant red fruit with savoury and mineral character. Quite approachable. This is a very fine and elegant Gevrey and drinkers are picking grand cru and definitely not 2007. This has great poise, concentration, minerality and great length. This has great finesse and length with a solid core of fine and ripe tannins. Clearly, the producer is the determining factor as it seems to transcend the vintage. The wine must have opened dramatically as Tanzer and Meadows were quite reserved about this wine when they tasted in barrels.

2002 Domaine de Montille Volnay 1er Cru Taillepieds
Beautiful crystalline red and dark fruit with great mineral focus. The striking feature for me is mid palate that is rich and has weight and is perfectly balanced, Sappy and spicy. Beautiful to drink now. While it is still primary, it is giving more than the 1995.

1995 Domaine de Montille Volnay 1er Cru Taillepieds
Showing some evolution with very slightly browning rim. Floral lift with some secondary savoury character in the form of truffles. Great purity and pinocity. On palate this had great focus, silkyness and plenty of power but this is very primary. This is yet to reach its perfect window of drinkability.

We all share a toast to Hubert de Montille.

1993 Gaja Barbaresco Sorì San Lorenzo
Dark core and some very slight bricking at the rim. Earthy and savoury, dark cherries and great complexity and layering. Palate has complex layering with cherries and savoury and truffly characters. Rich and sappy with underlying tannic structure which is showing almost perfect integration. This has some age but still a long time to go. Considering how the vintage is supposed to be, this is especially delightful. Another example of a producer transcending the vintage.

2

Thierry, nice notes and wines. I was disappointed to miss it.

Cheers, Howard

3

Thierry, thanks for posting these notes, and thanks to Mike and Cathy for this casual but very enjoyable evening.

Andrew

4

Thanks for the write up Thierry. Great set of wines and for me the 1995 de Montille represents the style I have always liked, bone dry, unforgiving and pure, this was 12% alcohol. Have followed this wine over the years and it is showing much more breadth and fruit now than it did a few years ago where one could question if it was drying out. Just finished it last night and it was wonderful. Just shows what great winemaking can do. de Montille was pretty much on his own with this style.

5

Echoing thanks to Mike and Cathy for a lovely evening - and Vorwerk of course!
The Jadot was the Criots - and one of the best CBMs I’ve had. Easy to forget what great white Jadot can / did make now that I don’t buy any anymore thx to premox!
The Chassagne shows how good 2010 may turn out to be - just a lovely, well-balanced wine. The Boillot is more minerally than other vintages I’ve had and will age very well I think.
With the two Taillepieds I feel the '02 is going to remain accessible and rewarding for the medium term, with the '95 perhaps being something very special in a lot more years.

6

Mike, the differences in the styles of the 1995 and 2002 Taillepieds were evident, but how much do you think this is due to the transition in winemaker from Hubert to Etienne? A lot of the winemaking responsibility (paraphrasing Remington Norman here) was handed over in 1990 and Etienne was co-manager by 1995. Quite different vintages too - 2002 being more forward and 1995 taking longer for the tannins to resolve.

7

I think the style is noticeably different, I doubt Hubert allowed Etienne do anything that that he did not 100% approve of. As the other Andrew commented “Hubert never picked at more than 21 brix (and sometimes as low as 19 brix). Accordingly, Hubert De Montille wines historically have always been only circa 12% ABV… And it may well be that it is the difference in ABV, if any, between the ’95 and ’02 Taillepieds that gives the strongest clue as to relative percentage of Etienne’s individual views holding sway in the vinification process. May well be that climate change means picking at such low brix is a thing of the past in Burgundy too.” I think Etienne is picking riper than Hubert would have, resulting in wines that are more flash and more of what is expected, not unique like Hubert’s unforgiving style. Cheers Mike

8

Thanks for the notes on de Montille. I’ve enjoyed some bottles of 95 Champans during the last 2 years. They are drinking very well right now. I have very little experience with these wines, but maybe I should wait a few years before I try again… to see if there is further improvement to come.

9

When Etienne took over…whenever that was (I guess depends on the definition), I think things changed dramatically there, stylistically. When I visited, in 2001, there was , seemingly, little left in current vintages of the legendary Humbert, austere style, as far as I could tell. I hadn’t realized before I visited that Etienne had pretty much changed the house style by then.