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Burgundy 2008 Day 2: Mortet, Grivot, Drouhin Laroze, Marc Colin, JM Boillot and Domaine des Lambrays
November 11th, 2009

(Where’d everybody go?)

It is amazing what you find out about your colleagues when you are in deepest France with nothing to do but taste 80-odd unfinished wines a day. Today’s bizarre revelations include the fact that our Fine Wine Buyer (the same one that reads Proust and looks wistfully at madelaines) once failed an appraisal whilst working at McDonalds, Alex can smell a corked bottle from twenty paces and Ben doesn’t know how one makes rose – despite living off Chateau St Baillon in St Tropez for three weeks every year. It is all a bit bizarre.

The addition of Ben to the team is of course a fantastic bonus. He arrived fashionably late, having travelled by Orient Express to Paris and sedan chair to Gevrey-Chambertin, just in time to taste his beloved Mortet and to tell Arnaud just how good a 2004 Bourgogne Rouge had been from magnum over the weekend. It just wouldn’t be Burgundy without Ben trying to talk his favourite growers into bottling everything in large formats. 75cl bottles, it seems, are for wimps.

(Meursault has the poshest walls!)

Anyway, day 2 of the Burgundy 2008 trip is over and things are beginning to take shape. Our initial impressions of the Cote de Beaune whites (a mix of 2006 richness and 2007 acidity) seem to be being borne out and we have had a chance to take a first look at some of the top Cote de Nuits reds too. The picture here is a bit more variable and the fact that many of the wines have yet to complete their malolactic fermentations means that tasting them is a mite tricky. Nevertheless the early signs are that there are some very impressive wines about.

Our Cote de Beaune stops took in Jean-Marc Boillot, looking every inch like a retired combative scrum half, Marc Colin and Tollot-Beaut in Chorey. The whites at Boillot and Colin were very much their usual selves. Boillot’s Pulignys are bright and expressive with minerality and fruit in spades while Colin’s St Aubins remain among the best value wines we buy from Burgundy. Whatever level you buy at – be it a case of Bourgogne Blanc for quaffing, mid-priced village wines for weekend dinners or the top Grand Crus – there is a delicious white Burgundy 2008 with your name on it.

(One of Burgundy’s best value whites?)

After a fantastic lunch chez Grivot (jambon persille from the best charcuterie in Burgundy, braised pork cheeks and aged Comte, all followed up by a private screening of a home video watching Etienne jump out of a plane) we hit the reds and found it is anything but grim up north. Grivot’s 2008s are worthy successors to the pure, effortlessly elegant wines he made in 2007 – and we were lucky enough to taste both vintages today. The major difference seems to be in the fuller structure of the 2008s. There’s more tannin and concentration this year. Everything has been turned up a notch. The challenge Etienne has set himself is to harness that power whilst retaining the elegance that is the hallmark of his finest wines. “Intensity without brutality” is a rather crude literal translation of his objective. He seems to be off to a very good start.
Elsewhere Arnaud Mortet’s 2008s were quite backward and difficult – very few had completed the malo – but there was more than enough evidence of sweet black cherry fruit and finely judged tannins to suggest he has done very well. Perhaps our best tasting today was also in Gevrey, at Drouhin-Laroze. The wines here were further advanced than Mortet’s, having completed their malo, and we loved what we found: pale, energetic wines with delicious, cherry red fruit framed by ultra-ripe tannins. Philippe Drouhin is justifiably proud of his year’s work. If other growers’ wines all taste like this when they have settled down in barrel, this could be a very interesting vintage for the Cote de Nuits reds.

(Posh courtyard at Domaine des Lambrays)

A final tip for tasters in Burgundy is to find out where Burghound’s Allan Meadows is tasting and try and arrive an hour or so later. You’ll find some very tasty bottles open. At Domaine de Lambrays this meant five vintages of their eponymous Grand Cru. Our picks were the gentle giant that was the 2008 and the surprisingly refreshing 2003; the latter to drink now while you wait patiently for the 2008. Even more surprising was the outstanding quality of the domaine’s two Puligny-Montrachet 1er Crus. Apparently the domaine bought the parcels as a Christmas Present in 1992. The quality of the Clos du Caillerets alone was enough to get us reaching for the notepad to write a letter to Santa.

Top 5 Wines

2008 White of the Day
St Aubin 1er Cru en Montceau Domaine Marc Colin – our pick of the perennial great value whites we always buy from here

2008 Red of the Day
Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Clos Prieur Domaine Drouhin Laroze – we could have picked any one of three or four DL wines but this stood out for its generous sweet fruit attack and refreshing, unforced style.

Posh 2008 Red of the Day
Richebourg Domaine Jean Grivot – perfumed, balanced, ripe, refreshing, elegant. A very easy tasting note to write.

Non-2008 Wine of the Day
Mazis-Chambertin Hospices de Beaune 1999 (bottled by Roux Pere et Fils) – brilliant stuff and great to taste it in Hospice de Beaune week. It actually needs the best part of another decade before it’s ready but nevertheless is pretty delicious now.

Blind Wine of the Day
Domaine de la Truffiere Vermentino 2007 – A tropical-scented white from Jean-Marc Boillot’s southern French estate at Pic St Loup. No one guessed the grape but at least we didn’t think it was a 1er Cru Puligny-Montrachet. Reputations are still just about intact.

By Dan
Entry Filed under: Burgundy, En Primeur, Fine wine