Top 5 Producers You Don’t Buy Anymore, and Why

WINE TALK
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Hey Paul thanks for your question. It made me run to my books of labels to make me recollect my experiences. So there is a reason why I do this :grinning_face:

It’s hard for me to use the word “favorite” with Jadot because, although I admire the house, it’s also huge, sort of industrial, and valuable more for its reliability than its great heights.

My experience with Jadot is very heavily skewed to Cote de Beaune. My neglect of Cote de Nuits below has less to do with the merits of Jadot in that area than my ignorance of it.

For a while there I was getting the Clos des Ursules of pick your vintage at insane remaindered discounts (as in, like, 60% off). At the price I thought it was ace.

I went through a bad patch of whites in the late 80s / early 90s vintages that were completely corked. A corked 1985 Montrachet is still memorably depressing.

I had great luck over 2009/10 with the Chevalier BM Desmoiselles. I think others make better Corton Charlie.

Overall the “sure things” with me have been the red Beaune wines. I happen to love red Beaune. It’s a personal history thing. YMMV. My relationship with burg is not one of scores or even quality. It’s homesickness. I can almost always identify Chassagne Morgeots — regardless of producer — by that feeling, because I was more or less weaned on it. I don’t offer my preferences as having anything to do with objective merit; other people on this board are far more reliable than me in those terms. All I offer is a life expressed through wine.

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I’ve found the CDN Jadot wines to generally need a ton of time but also to be mostly underwhelming.

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not 5 but my first list passion, Williams Selyem

Palate moved away from Cali pinot, to explore Oregon and Bordeaux especially…

Secondly, consistently finding WS wines at or below list on auction sites.

My first pinot love domestically, so will always have a special spot

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SQN — never really liked the stuff, sold most of it to friends, the ones kept for wine dinners never made me or anyone else that happy.

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Sorry to be late on seeing this, but I’m wondering why the stems made it harder to press?

We press a lot of high whole cluster lots and I would say that the stems allow the juice to make it out more easily. I’m just wondering what the fmdifference in our experiiwnce might be and have absolutely zero experience in your region.

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-Cedric Bouchard: I get the hype, but for whatever reason these don’t grab me, they are not cheap and demand is high. So, you’re welcome Bouchard-o-philes.

-Jadot (though I’m always partial to Ursules). @JohnMag summed up good reasons

-Le Moine: I liked their style when I was starting out (primary fruit forward) but they don’t seem to evolve into complexity. Still, not selling my 16 CSD

-Henri Gouges: like Ursules, Gouges was a wake-up-call-wine that got me into Burgundy. But they upped prices and seem to have shifted into a bigger style that’s over the top even for me. Not bad wine at all, I’ve just moved on.

-Mugnier NSG 1er Marechale: I dunno, I just found other things I liked more. Still like his Chambolle wines

Answer to the question you didn’t ask:

Which producers replaced these?
Reds: Hudelot Noellat, Fourrier, H. Lignier, Audoin, Berthaut Gerbet, Drouhin and when I can get it: Mugneret Gibourg, Cecile Tremblay, Dujac

Whites: H. Boillot, Sauzet, Christian Moreau Chablis, Fevre. Lately have an (expensive) crush on Chevalier

Bubbles: Agrapart Mineral, Suenen

Missed the boat (Great wines, but I’m not willing to pay the price)
Roumier, Rousseau, Coche

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I’m largely in the same camp re: Bouchard. Other than a Boloree that was stunning once, I have never been thrilled, nor has Jonathan. I try them occasionally in restaurants overseas when I see them for good prices, for a reality check, but don’t buy them for our home.

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I haven’t been buying as much Bouchard lately because I have so many, but interestingly VV has been my favorite of their cuvees; I think the other ones need a ton of time. Even the VV probably does, the 11 and 13 versions have been great, but the 21 is still crazy good.

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Marcus,

I guess the way one presses has everything to do with it. It’s not the stems, per se. It’s the fact that unbroken berries still on the stems tend to remain intact the way that I press: Slowly and gently. Most of those beautiful whole berries’ juice is not captured. It remains in the pomace.

I had decided that the slow, incremental pressing was more important to me than having the whole clusters involved. And in the case of Zinfandel, destemming very slowly tends to remove the greenest berries and the driest raisins, both of which can be a negative if the proportion is too high.

F

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Thanks Fred, that all makes a lot if sense.

Unquestionably there are unbroken berries on the clusters at pressing. Pinot Noir skins are pretty thin and I have found that by the time we press (we spend a fairly long time in fermenter) everything releases the juice very easily. I can definitely see how that would be different for other varietals.

And gentle destemming does tend to separate the green berries and the raisins.

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What is your alternative to Saxum?

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Linne Calodo - where Justin began his winemaking career.

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Great stuff. Price is getting up there so not quite the value it was but still worth it.

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The Slacker bottles are in the $40’s. They drink well. The house brand is in the $90’s . Still well below Saxum’s $130’s - $150’s ish.

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When “de” is an ennobling article, as in Alexis de Tocqueville, it can be dropped, but it doesn’t have to be. When, because it is before a vowel and is d’, as in d’Artagnan, it is not ordinarily dropped. In the case of a wine named Marquis d’Angerville, I would say the proper name, being of a wine and not a marquis, is d’Angerville. But Yquem is a genuine counter example.

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David,

Some day, you and I are going to get together and drink 30 year old 2016 Bordeauxs!!!

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Well, difficult question, as I think it is a combo of my preference has been changing towards elegance for many years in a combo of seeking more special moments rather than a nice experience.
But here it goes, probably a bit unfair and more like examples than a hate list…

  • Faiveley / Bouchard / Jadot. Far too many nice rather than great wines from excellent terroir.
  • Sammarco. Purchased many once, needs many years, prefer more sangiovese based Tuscan wines.
  • Thomas Morey. Nice, used to be my house chassagne for white, but prices have normalised, and no longer on the list.
  • Nicolas Rossignol. Bought many 05,09,10 good reviews and low prices. But never really fell in love, note to self. Buy based on own palate and not scores…
  • Henri Boillot. Probably the white wine producer I have had the most wine from. Some great exp, but too many ox.
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Howard, we need to do it sooner than that. Maybe with 30+ year old Bordeaux from the ‘80s or ‘90s.

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This thread has been interesting to read. My producer departure is almost entirely due to larger taste changes. For instance, I used to drink much more Napa cab. Then as Napa cabs got bigger, I would backfill aged Napa cab in the 20-30 year range. But now the wines I liked are in the 30+ year range and the stuff in the 10-20 is not really stylistically to my preference. So it’s not just one cab producer, it’s really all of them that I stopped buying. Now really all cab purchases, with the exception of some BerserkerDay buys, are at the winery during trips with folks.

I suppose I stopped buying most barolo, brunello, and barbaresco for the same reason. I just don’t drink that much of it, and when I do, I often wish I’d just opened some Burgundy, Oregon pinot, Champagne, or any number of lovely whites.

I guess I’ve rarely had very many situations where I was really locked in on a producer and then just shifted off the producer but stayed heavy in the region. Unless it was purely an issue of pricing - either it was all I could afford or it priced me out.

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I think Nicolas’s wines have gotten much better in recent years; we’re doing a dinner with him at La Paulee in a month or so.

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