a fine wine tasting archive
7 notes
Bouchard owns roughly a third of Chevalier-Montrachet and is the only house with parcels on all four of its terraces. The domaine bottling, from a warm and generous 2009, seventeen years on — and the question of whether the hill's tension survived the sun.
A house built on Côte de Nuits reds makes only a handful of whites. This is one of them — closed on opening, then long, layered and saline, and still not finished at fifteen.
Olivier Bernstein had made exactly three vintages when 2009 arrived. His Charmes-Chambertin, blended from old vines in Charmes and Mazoyères, was the Burgundy that followed a Salon and preceded two Krankls — and held its ground.
John Kongsgaard lets his Chardonnay ferment for the better part of a year, watches it go through a stage that smells like something has gone wrong, and waits. The vineyard is named for his father, who was one.
Nicolas Potel lost his family domaine, built a négociant business, lost the right to his own name, and started again from scratch in 2009. This Chambertin is from that first year of the second business.
For the first time in the house's history, Dom Pérignon released a vintage out of order — 2009 ahead of 2008. The reason was not that 2009 was better. It was that 2009 was ready.
2009 gave the Côte de Beaune ripeness and took away acidity. Morgeot is the broadest of Chassagne's premiers crus. On paper the two should have cancelled each other out — eleven years on, they hadn't.