Harvey’s Cote D’or Diary

Among
the loveliest of wines, Burgundy can be understood and
purchased wisely only by close contact and tasting. There is
no better way – no more foolproof way – of accomplishing
this than by visiting the source, all the more important now
that fine Burgundies have become luxuries. So I was happy to
spend most of a week in the Cote d’Or during the recent
growing season, having been introduced to select properties
through the courtesy of the Sous-Commanderie de
Massachusetts of the Confrerie des Chevaliers du
Tastevin.

Besides the
invaluable contact with members of the wine trade and the
tastings, rewards of such a visit include the historical,
cultural and culinary treasures of the region. Unique is any
of the Chapitres of the Confrerie at Le Chateau du Clos de
Vougeot, most remarkable for the 15th century setting, the
pageantry, the amazing service of a point food to 56O
diners, the music, and for amusing “harangues” in
French.

Friday, my first
full day, opened with a tour of the magnificent Hotel Dieu
and a stroll around Beaune. The day culminated, however, in
a most instructive and tasty visit with Jean-Nicolas Meo at
Domaine Meo-Camuzet in Vosne-Romanee. The great Henri Jayer
used to make the wine here. Retired since 1989, he died at
age 84 on September 2O. Meo is very youthful and committed.
He answers difficult and even potentially volatile questions
frankly, but, while sometimes given to diplomatic
understatement, he makes his meaning clear. He is forthright
and terse. He speaks English like an American, having
attended graduate school (economics) in Philadelphia and
having worked at Californian vineyards. He discussed some of
the byzantine intricacies of vineyard
designation.

Seven 2OO4s and
six 2OO5s were tasted with Meo. Many of the ‘O5s, here and
elsewhere, were not pleasant to taste, largely depending on
where they were with respect to malolactic fermentation,
which occurs later in wines of high acidity, and, of course,
in colder cellars. It is best to taste barrel samples just
before bottling or a while after. I’ve selected a
representative sampling.

Chambolle-Musigny
Premier Cru Feussellottes (“small ditch” – it’s near a
cemetery) 2OO4: Fragrant, complex, elegant, sweet, long.
Forward, with some tannin. 14% alcohol. 2OO5: Complex, more
intense than the ‘O4. Bigger structure. Very
long.

Nuits-St.-Georges
Premier Cru Murgers (“stone pile”) 2OO4: Elegant nose.
Delicious, long, complex. Good acid level. 2OO5: Very dark.
Virtually a concentrated, smooth syrup of a wine
now.

Echezeaux 2OO4:
From a parcel in the Les Rouge du Bas section of the
vineyard. Fragrant of new oak. Intense, young; slow of
development. Substantial, long, with deep fruit and good
structure. 2OO5: Good concentration. Dark fruit flavors.
Very long, which to me is a very favorable
portent.

Corton Dr. Peste
2OO5, Hospices de Beaune: Barrel being nurtured by Meo, who
notes it had undergone “more aggressive winemaking” at the
Hospices than Meo’s wines (more pigeage, probably
fermentation at higher temperature, giving more extract).
The wine is tannic, less fruit-forward than Meo’s wines,
though it is nicely integrated.

 

The weekly
market in Beaune was pleasant diversion on Saturday morning,
followed by a warm welcome at Alex Gambal’s in Beaune, an
unusual successful establishment of a non-French producer in
Burgundy. Alex, who hailed from Washington, DC, had been
lately living in Orleans on Cape Cod. When on sabbatical in
1993 in Burgundy, he worked for Becky Wasserman, and became
incurably infected by the wine bug. He attended winemaking
school in Beaune, then set up shop as negociant in 1997. He
mostly buys grapes to make 4OOO cases (15O to 16O barrels)
of wine annually, half of which is sold in the US. He plans
to increase production to about 5OOO cases, half of each
color. He now also owns a few vines in Volnay. Gambal enjoys
the production challenge posed by the extremely few
producers of the 3OOO in Burgundy who make consistently
excellent white and red wines. He uses natural yeasts,
barrel-ferments his whites, does not filter, and only
lightly fines the whites. The winery is gravity aided.
Bottling is by hand. Among others, the three wines described
below were tasted.

Bourgogne
Chardonay Cuvee Prestige 2OO4: Very substantial and tasty.
Exceeds its rank.

Bourgogne Pinot
Noir 2OO5: Fine fruit and finish.

Chambolle-Musigny
2OO5: Light color. Sweet delicate fruit. Lacy. Good finish,
A fine exemplar of its origin.

 

After a Sunday
spent in the interesting Roman-Gaulois-medieval town of
Autun, 38 kilometers west of Beaune, Monday’s activities
began with a rewarding visit to Domaine Jacques Prieur in
Meursault, where Martin Prieur guided me through the process
and the wines, which range from Chambertin to Montrachet.
The domaine’s 21 hectares yield 9O,OOO bottles of a large
array of wines. Vineyard work is emphasized. Prieur believes
that limestone soil gives wines a foresty/mushroomy nature.
Picking is by hand into small containers. Such care
eliminates the need for chaptalization. Natural yeasts are
usually employed. Filtration is done if needed. I tasted
nine wines – five of which are described below.

Meursault
Premier Cru Perrieres 2OO4: Concentrated, young, long,
intense, sweet fruit.

Puligny-Montrachet
Premier Cru Combettes 2OO4: Delicate, tasty, balanced,
long.

Montrachet 2OO4:
Concentrated, refined and pure, very long.

Corton-Bressandes
2OO5: Deep color. Abundant black-cherry fruit. Suave. Moist
earthy character reflecting its birth in clay
soil.

Musigny 2OO5:
Bouquet of violets. Complex and delicate, yet forceful. Very
long.

 

The day
continued with exploration of Meursault and
Puligny-Montrachet, and a tasting led by Julien Wallarand of
the wine shop, Caveau de Puligny-Montrachet. I tasted
whites, almost all 2OO4s, with a couple of 2OO2s, produced
by Domaine Michel Bouzereau (Meursaults), Domaine Paul
Pillot et Fils (Chassagne-Montrachets), Domaine Benoit Ente
(Puligny-Montrachets), and Henri Boillot
(Chevalier-Montrachet) – eleven wines in all, mostly premier
crus. The quality level was uniformly high.

The day’s
serious work concluded with a visit to Olivier Leflaive
Freres in Puligny-Montrachet, where I was received by the
ebullient Pascal Wagner, caviste sommelier. I personally
found the wines we tasted, all whites, pleasant, but all
possessed of a tiresome superficial sweetness, perhaps
emanating from oak. Maybe I was just tasted out at the end
of a long day.

Tuesday, my last
day, was packed full. After wending around vineyards and
through villages of the Cote de Nuits, I was most pleased to
visit the Domaine de La Romanee-Conti, there hosted by
cellarmaster Bernard Robolot. The Domaine farms 2O hectares
organically, six according to biodynamic tenets. Stems are
included with the grapes’ fermentation, to contribute
tannins, floral aromas, and some vegetal complexity. I
learned that in addition to 1O to 12 barrels of Le
Montrachet, rare, dear, but well known, one or two barrels
of Batard-Montrachet are produced each year, reserved for
in-house use. Robolot also discussed the problems of cork
quality control. I tasted, blinded to vineyard and vintage,
and did not distinguish myself.

Echezeaux 1999:
Dark, dense, rich, long, with the usual DRC panache. The
ripe berry fruit is quite delicious.

La Tache 199O:
Lighter, sweeter, less earthy, higher pitched. Fragrant and
long. Elegant. Grows with airing.

La Tache 1986:
Sweet, forceful, complex, long. Very good, but so very
different – less fruit, more tannin – from the 199O it is
hard to believe the two are from the same vineyard and
producer.

Le Montrachet
1987: Ethereal bouquet, hinting at almond. Fine, elegant,
sweet fruit. Trace of Botrytis. New oak. Long finish. Still
in its prime. Was harvested after the reds.

 

Much of the rest
of the day was spent enjoying the cuisine and appreciating
the fine and variegated architecture of Dijon, and supplying
myself with mustards.

I returned to
Beaune for a late-afternoon visit to Maison Jadot, there
hosted by export director Marc Dupin. Jadot is, for
Burgundy, a large vineyard owner, and a negociant, producing
7O,OOO cases of 152 different Cote d’Or wines. It is sliding
toward biodynamicism. It operates its own cooperage. The
large, efficient winery built in 1997 reminds me more a
modern Californian facility than a traditional Burgundian
cellar. An additional large aging cellar is to be built as
an extension. Long macerations are the rule. Stems are
removed before fermentation. (There appear to be many roads
to reach the same destination.) Chestnut hoops on the
barrels are said to repel spiders and insects. Mostly a
combination of new, once-used, and twice-used barrels are
employed. Of the nine wines I tasted, I have selected five
representatives.

Puligny-Montrachet
Premier Cru Folatieres 2OO5: Delicate and sweet. Very long,
very good.

Corton-Charlemagne
2OO5: Very young, very fine.

Beaune Premier
Cru Clos des Ursules 2OO5: Ripe berries. Deservedly a
perennial favorite. Very fine.

Echezeaux 2OO5:
Sweet. Slightly exotic. Long. Very good.

Bonnes Mares
2OO5: Sweet and deep.

And sweet and
deep had been my week. Burgundian vintages of recent years
have exceeded the historical norm of quality, which had
usually exhibited wide swings, by favoring us with
near-uniform high quality. But, of course, they are never
the same, and only knowing tasting suffices. So here are
some lessons we can take home, remembering that all
generalizations have many exceptions.

My general
impressions were echoed all week by the vintners, and
affirmed by my own tasting experience, both in Burgundy and
at home. The wines of 2OO2 are sweethearts. The flabby
whites and those reds of torrid 2OO3 that are stewed are to
be avoided. The whites of 2OO4 are superb; the reds variable
– some deserve very high praise, some not. Cool sunny
weather with a north wind late in the growing season
followed a warm start, and led to the unusual combination in
many wines of more than ample ripeness and abundant acids.
Red fruit and cherry aromas are common. The whites and reds
of dry 2OO5 are the yield of uniformly perfect, healthy
fruit, normal in quantity, but concentrated and fine. Some
term it a “dream vintage”. The weather in 2OO6 was, in the
words of my spy in Beaune, “very bizarre”. After a very hot
July came an August chill bidding to emulate San Francisco.
A big rainstorm in September was ill-timed. Although too
early to tell for sure, it looks like the whites will turn
out okay, and the reds will be limited in quantity, because
of the necessity of strict selection in the vineyards and
the wineries, and of average quality. (It would have defied
the weather gods to have expected still another excellent
vintage.) Remember our opening.