Notes from the Burgundy trail, Pt. 1…
My 2-3 trips per year to the motherland are always full of great wine, food, camaraderie and discovery, but this last trip proved to be especially fruitful and exciting. The addition of five new producers to our portfolio, the volcanic cloud over Europe, and some gorgeous weather on the Côte d’Or added up to an excellent adventure indeed.
In the ice-cold cellars chez Mugnier
I have admired (make that idolized, to be honest) Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier and his wines for as long as I can remember. My favorite “Freddy” quote sums up my feelings exactly – “Winemaking is essentially not a technical issue, it is an aesthetical issue.” If you’ve ever tasted his wines, you understand this immediately. They are the most ethereal, elegant, purest and most pristine examples you may ever enjoy. His wines have greatly inspired our philosophy and the way we do things at Scott Paul, and our Audrey bottling is our humble attempt to capture a little of that “Freddy magic” in the bottle. To now work with him and import his wines is beyond a dream come true.
My first tasting upon arriving in Burgundy two weeks ago was at Mugnier. Freddy was on holiday in Japan, so I tasted with his delightful (and aptly named) assistant, Audrey. Many of Burgundy’s greatest often seem to shine brightest in the more difficult vintages, and this is quite true chez Mugnier. His ’08s, which were racked into tank about a month before my visit, are some of his most stunning yet. Bottling is scheduled for next week, and the entire range was singing with the domaine’s trademark purity and weightless elegance. The Bonnes Mares, often a bit difficult in its youth, was already showing pure silk that belied its intense flavor impact. The Musigny of course (still in barrel, to be racked and bottled last), has an extra dimension of depth and polish. Not a soul in the cellar spoke a word after swallowing the Musigny (no one spit, either) – we just swallowed and savored in silent, reverent rapture. Since taking over the 25-acre Clos de la Marechale in 2004 (a Nuits-St. Georges 1er Cru monopole of the domaine), they’ve continued to fine-tune the quality each year. In ’08, the CDLM is intensely flavorful and redolent of rich blackberries and earth, and is clearly a now a textural and stylistic cousin of the domaine’s Chambolle-based wines, but from a very different branch of the family. In all, a magnificent range of wines. Our tiny allocation of his ’07s will arrive in mid-May – watch this space and your email for the opportunity to grab your share of some of the most delightful wines on the planet. (Audrey finished up the tasting with the ’01 Bonnes Mares, which on the day was astonishingly pure, linear, and fine. Bravo!)
I love France, always have. However, there are no ice cubes in France. What that says about the country I’m not quite sure. (To be fair, there are “ice cubes”, so to speak. If you ask for them, you get one sliver of frozen water that immediately melts upon impact with your drink.) If you want something cold to drink – head to the cellars at Mugnier. The barrel cellar is absolutely ice-cold – about 39 degrees most of the year. No matter how thick your boots and socks are, your feet will turn to frozen stumps when you taste there, I’m just sayin’… And another thing – how many times a day is one supposed to go to church? The bells ring incessantly at least twice a day in every village, yet no one heeds them, as the churches remain resolutely empty (save for the occasional very old lady.) Vive la France…
In addition to Mugnier, we have now added Domaine Michel Lafarge (to many the best producer in Volnay), Domaine Pavelot (to many the best producer in Savigny-les-Beaune), Domaine Comte Armand (to many the best producer in Pommard), and Bonneau du Martray (revered as one of the best in Corton-Charlemagne.) Wow. I think that now we just may have assembled the best Burgundy portfolio on the planet. I am like a kid in a candy store – I am so excited to work with all 20 of our producers and share their wines with you. Not that I’m passionate about any of this…
At Anne & Hervé Sigaut in Chambolle, we decided to bottle our barrel of ’08 Chambolle villages later this week. It has rounded out nicely over the course of élévage, and I now plan to release it in the fall. I also selected a barrel of ’09 Chambolle from the Sigaut’s parcel of Derrière le Four (in ’09 they’ll be releasing two different cuvées of Chambolle, one from Les Bussières on the Morey border, and the other from Derrière le Four, which is just south of the the village.) The Bussières is richer, and the Derrière le Four more elegant, reflecting the difference in the mother rock of the two sites (which are about 1,500 meters apart, perhaps…)
Hervé Sigaut, in his cellar with the late Phoebus the cat...
The news in Chablis is that Frédéric Gueguen now has a little Grand Cru juice available, to go with his killer array of villages and 1er cru sites. We will bring in a bit of the ’07 Bougros Grand Cru this fall – really stunning stuff, with an extra dimension of intense minerality and explosive length that I find irresistible. Oh yeah…
It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, I’ve got to blab a bit. I’m a notoriously poor blind taster, and have been known to make some hysterical guesses. Once in a great while though, I nail it. Last week in Pommard it was a 2002 Pommard Platières at Thierry Violot-Guillemard that he served blind, and to my extreme delight I hazarded the correct guess (it is of course much easier when you know the vineyard holdings of the producer in question, but nonetheless I blow it horribly fairly often.) It may not happen again for quite some time, so I thought it worth mentioning…
The ’08s are a revelation at Huber-Verdereau in Volnay, as Thièbault Huber has found the path to elegance that he’s been looking for, and it is there in his wines in spades. Bravo, Thièbault! Detailed notes on his entire range in the days ahead…
Benjamin Leroux, the rock-star winemaker at Comte Armand in Pommard and his own micro-negoce Maison Benjamin Leroux – is one of the progressive young vignerons experimenting with some small parcels of ultra-high density plantings. The AOC rules require 10,000 plants per hectare – which works out to meter-by-meter plantings, the standard now on the Côte. Some are even higher density, at one meter by .9 meters, or occasionally by .8 meters. These new experiments are taking the density to double or triple the current norm – some are 1 meter by .5, and some even .5 by .5 – resulting in 20,000 to 30,000 plants per hectare. But is this actually anything new? As recently as the 1800s, Burgundian vineyards were planted “en foule” – meaning they vines were not in rows, but jammed in willy-nilly in a patchwork one right next to the other in 30,000+ vines per hectare. There were no trellis wires or end posts then, just small wooden stakes next to each vine.
Comte Armand's ultra-high density block of Volnay Fremiets
And these new experiments today? Benjamin Leroux’s Dom. Comte Armand parcel of Volnay Fremiets, for example – 1 meter by .5, no trellis wires, and tall wooden stakes next to each plant. Everything old is new again! (Ben’s also doing this in conjunction with his Biodynamic principles – wanting to have no metal stakes or wire in the vineyard, only wood and natural elements.) The theory of course is that the increased density forces the vines to send their roots deeper in search of moisture and nutrients, forcing the vines to compete harder for limited resources. Then only a couple of clusters are left to ripen on each vine, allowing the plant to put all its energy into ripening just a tiny amount of fruit. In the old days, yields from this type of planting typically topped out at 1-1.5 tons per acre – extremely low, but exceedingly high in quality, or so the theory goes. DRC has put in some experimental ultra-high density blocks in Romanée-St. Vivant and Grands Echézaux at 14,000 plants per hectare, and I’m told Olivier Lamy has put in some blocks at a density of 30,000. It will be quite interesting to follow these as the vines mature…
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So many more domaines to report on, so many more stories to tell – in the posts to follow…
