I have had several of these experiences. The only problem with your quest is “there are no great wines only great bottles”. Finding that great well stored bottle that gives you that experience. It is not easy and unfortunately takes experimentation. The wines that did it for me…
1985 Jayer Echezeaux that wasn’t corked. I had 2 that were. The one that wasn’t would fit your bill.
1985/1991/1996 Rousseau Chambertin
1971 Vogue Musigny
1978 DRC La Tache (pristine bottle 750 not the Rudy 3L that I tasted in SF that was swill)
1971 RSV (DRC) Marey-Monge out of magnum
1962 Pierre Ponnelle Bonne Mares
1948 DRC Grands Echezeaux out of Magnum
1929 Chateau de la Tour Clos Vougeot out of magnum
1955 Maison Leroy Grands Echezeaux
I could name more but any of these on a given night would change my world. There is no wine in the world like them. Nothing that can compare. Matters of taste are always arbitrary however so your mileage may vary here.
Cheers
BTW, I want to thank Bill Graves in heaven. Without his generosity and friendship, I would NEVER have had the chance to experiment here. RIP friend.
Thanks. Just to be clear, these are all wines that you would recommend for drinking now if I could find one of them? Given your “bottle variation” caveat, would I be better off buying, say 3 bottles at $3000 each?
And should I drink them without food? (A bottle of wine without food seems unwise) Or if not, then with what? (Presumably the best food I can buy will cost far less than the wine)
You should DEFINITELY drink them with food. Because they are all red, a nice duck confit or seared duck breast would be perfect. Simple is best. Again there are no great wines only great bottles so that would be your quest. More bottles to try is best.
This is where the Jayer is instructive. The 1985 Jayer Echezeaux probably had a 30 to 40% TCA rate. So chances of you getting a good one is about 2 out of 3. Buying 3 bottles of this one is well out of your range however. The others on the list I have been lucky. The 3L from Rudy was a fake 78 DRC I am positive.
I did have a younger recent wine that rocked my world. 2017 Bizot Echezeaux. My goodness this one is great. BTW, I don’t drink like this. I drink older reds. Usually Volnay or some 1er. I love Chassagne Rouges and Savigny Les Beaune from Vincent Guillemot. They satisfy me. My normal Burgundy is anything white. I like variety and also acidity.
I emphasized prices I paid for Rossignol-Trapet because I know from years of discussions on this board with Mark that he likes the wines of Rossignol-Trapet.
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Stop being so jealous. It is not our fault that some of you did not find Burgundy producers until after they already were famous and the prices got out of sight. Enjoy your Boredough while we get to drink the nectar of the gods that we have bought at prices you will never see.
It is probably good that a lot of you don’t buy Burgundy because you would just be drinking them a 6-10 years old (as Parker told you to do) right when they have closed up tight. You would then write notes on CellarTracker calling these wines over the hill and would never get to see what becomes of them with age anyway.
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On behalf of those poor sods, the Parker acolytes who think six year old Burgundy is over the hill, perhaps you can give one or two examples. The over the hill is especially confusing unless you are talking premox. But I don’t think you are.
There are certainly people who drink DRC young, but I take it as part of the learning curve, and they have other bottles to taste when they have cellar age.
And as for buying early, well I was getting Rousseau and DRC in the early nineties. I remember buying magnums of La Tache1990 for $700, and Rousseau 1990 Chambertin for $70. The 2002 Chambertin was $140, but only if I purchased one for one, another bottle of lesser grand cru. The Mazoyeres was around $70. That is if I bought cases. I did. And mixed cases of DRC 1999 were $3299.
I can’t remember what I paid for Mugnier Bonnes Mares and Musigny but it wasn’t much. Many were drunk, but some, when they reached four figures were sold to finance the Bordeaux cellar. My only regret is that I did not wait a little longer, when the Chinese started buying.
And Howard, we know that you bought Truchot early, because you have told about it so many times. Well done!
There is nothing wrong with drinking DRC young, and I’ve said on many occasions that there’s a bit of groupthink on this forum regarding when wines are in their prime. While the wines will likely improve with time, more modern vintages are spectacular close to release. 21 DRC (all of them, really) are drinking absolutely phenomenally atm.
Regarding Paul’s question, if you source burgundy well and buy from top producers, your hit rate should be outstanding. At the 10k price point, you can certainly source 99 LT and perhaps source 90 LT both of which are phenomenal. I’m very partial to 88 as well.
Past prime is the CellarTracker answer for anything more than five years old.
FWIW, back to the mid 1990s (when I first started on wine discussion fora…and yes, I know they were around before then) there has always been a cult of aging wines to some sort of mythical peak that never, ever happens.
I have never been of the view that blind tastings can ‘prove’ anything, either positive or negative.
I like it all and have been lucky enough to drink more than my share of La Tache and Rousseau Chambertin; both take the breath away at their best and neither are quite consistently brilliant. They are an important part of the story but if that were the only part of the story one would lose interest fairly quickly, the real Burgundy lover(a different thing than a wine lover) enjoys the nooks and crannies at least as much as the summit and the journey as much as the destination; which doesn’t of course mean that one doesn’t recognise the destination.
There seems to be some expectation nowadays both by the domaine and its importers that the wines will be drunk young; indeed the German importer makes such consumption more or less mandatory.
In the modern era it doesn’t seem to me that the wines necessarily either require or reward very extensive ageing.
I think wines like 16 La Tache can be drunk early but will also improve with bottle age. I do think that in general, top wines won’t require nearly as much time to drink as in past days; whether they’ll benefit from longer aging is to be seen; I do think it will still help, but is likely not required like it was in the past.
