Eight Barrels From Two Neighbours

Olivier Bernstein arrived in Burgundy from outside it. He came from the music business, studied wine in Beaune, and in 2007 set himself up in the town as a micro-négociant with an unusual proposition: he would not buy finished wine, or even grapes at the gate, but would rent old-vine parcels in premier and grand cru sites and farm them himself, year-round, with a local vigneron from Gevrey-Chambertin at his side. The wines would be tiny in quantity — a few barrels of each — and the range would run almost entirely to the top of the Côte de Nuits.

By 2009 he had three vintages behind him and a reputation forming fast. The Charmes-Chambertin is built from two suppliers’ parcels, one in Charmes proper and one in Mazoyères, the neighbouring grand cru that is legally allowed to call itself Charmes and usually does. The two components go into the vat together. The vines are old, the extraction is gentle, and the oak is generous — Bernstein has never been shy about new barrels, and the wines are made to absorb them.

The Easy Year

2009 in Burgundy was the vintage everyone liked immediately. A warm, sunny, untroubled season produced ripe, generous reds with soft tannins and plenty of flesh — the kind of wines that showed beautifully on release and made critics reach for words like seductive. The question that hung over them was whether the charm would last, or whether the low acidity would let them go slack. Twelve years on is a fair moment to ask.

The Charmes-Chambertin from that year had been described young as wild and perfumed: raspberry and violet over earth, juicy purple fruit with a sweetness to it, a very fine-grained texture and a finish that lingered on perfume. Charmes as an appellation is known for exactly that — the most immediately fragrant and generous of the Gevrey grands crus, at its best between ten and twenty years.

In the Glass

It came second in the evening, after Salon’s 1996, and it had the job of being the Burgundy before the table turned to California.

The colour was still a bright, translucent ruby with only the first hint of garnet at the edge. The nose had moved on from the primary violet of its youth into something more layered — dried rose, raspberry compote, sweet earth and a soft, sandalwood-like note from the oak, which had folded completely into the wine. On the palate it was medium-bodied and silky, with the sweetness of fruit that marks the vintage, but the tannins had kept their fine grain and the finish held a savoury, mineral length that argued against any worry about slackness. A ripe-year Burgundy that had stayed a Burgundy.

Elsewhere in this archive the same vintage appears from a different Gevrey grand cru, the Roche de Bellene Chambertin 2009, and Bernstein himself returns with a Corton-Charlemagne from the same year. On this night the Charmes handed over to Next of Kyn, Sine Qua Non’s B 20 and, at the end, Mr. K’s Straw Man — and did not look small beside any of them.