Category: Pinot Noir

Apart from the odd Bourgogne, there’s been little Burgundy buying around here since the 2005 vintage when already high prices started to get just daft. When a normally sensible wine buying friend returned from a frenzy of a wholesaler’s warehouse clearance sale buried under a mountain of bottles with a average price of about $15, it would have been rude not to accept an offer to split the spoils, just not sure where to put it all? Always had a soft spot for Jadot, who make something like 240 different wines each year without seeming to resort to much rationalist blending and industrial safety. Le Vaucrain is a single vineyard holding in Comblanchien where the Nuits Saint Georges vines give way to limestone quarries. Bit of reduction and lift to start which clear quickly. Then there’s a dark stony edge here that maybe reflects those NSG preconceptions. Dark dried cherries, over ripe wild strawberry and a whiff of roses, all cut by suave acidity and firm grape skin tannin. A touch of earthy mulch to season the cut of a mineral grip. Improving over two days, those cool soft tingles, perfect ripeness and that composed freshness which can clearly mark Burgundy are much in evidence. A delicious surprise, though a current RRP pushing $100 makes it perhaps not the best value Pinot Noir on the planet.

13.5% alcohol. Cork. Thanks D and finewineco.com for such a bargain.

93 very suave points.

A spoil for a very quiet dark Saturday night in Melbourne under curfew. For once the cork was still firm, taut and came out in one piece. Good omen. The contents of the bottle? Very ripe wild strawberries like they sell in those small punnets in French markets. Some rich cherry extract and a good amount of sweet autumnal leaf litter from the twenty years slumber. All very of the essence with no sweetness, each sip leaving a haunting perfume in the retro nasal canyons. Sometimes a good sized nose is a blessing. Great adult flavours built on a firm but lithe backbone of austere chalky acidity and powder fine tannin. Just beautiful.

12.50% alcohol, size it not everything. Cork. 593 gms of glass. Maybe about €40 years ago in Paris.

96 points.

There’s not many 1999s left now in the cellar. This one from the shelves of Lavinia on Boulevard Madeleine. Happy days. Still red in colour and oaky in smell. Lots of new oak does seem to lead to strong colours and a sanitary outcome, lots of furry tannin disrupting the finish too. As well as the oak which it must be admitted is very good, those Burgundians know how to choose being so close to the best coopers, there’s loads of other evocative smells and flavours. Something like an old English pub, worn leather, a smoky open fire and a background of warm alcoholic haze. Buried under the oak and extraction are deeply meaningful notes of kirsch, strawberry liqueur, dark blood orange juice, cocoa powder and an indescribable essence of a fine autumn evening. So pure, dense and achingly sweet. Amazing fruit from a vineyard a road width’s away from Chambertin itself. The nineties were a time when maximum extraction seemed the goal all the way from Central Otago to the Côte d’Or. Some grapes survived the thrashing better than others.

13% alcohol. Cork which broke and crumbled of course. Need more practice with old Burgundy! Memory fails about price but I can remember a €100 limit.

95 points.

Not much left in the cellar from the last millennium, now there’s one less. Opened a little red brick coloured but gained a deeper garnet as it aired and rid itself of some still residual sulphur. Still fresh and fragrant. Wild strawberry, perfumed geranium, clove, aniseed and freshly dug sweet loam. Cherry liqueur and chocolate. Weirdly reminiscent of a Bass Phillip when on form in smell and an unfiltered cloudiness. A little smoky reduction still drifts in and out after twenty years of age. Delicious tang of blood orange juice acidity and those so cultured Côte d’Or tannins, now soft and mellow. Les Champeaux is up on the Combe in Gevrey and should be a bit cooler in theory than the lower burly crus. Well, true enough if the wine’s so beautifully fresh and supports the idea as it does here. What is undeniable is the lingering fragrance of a superbly decadent old Burgundy. Another of those hand luggage bottles before the world changed in 2001. Now the idea of any luggage at all seems exotic.

13% alcohol. Long squishy cork just doing the job. Was about €40 from old Caves Augé.

95 points.