DC 2009 Red Burgundy Jeebus

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Yule Kim

Yule Kim
This past Thursday, Maureen organized a dinner at Lavandou in DC in order to showcase several '09 red Burgundies.

The consensus at the table was that, while the '09s were grapey and young, they weren't overripe or overly fruited as a general rule. Someone commented that, in comparison to '07 Barolos, these wines were downright austere (which may not necessarily be saying much, but there you go). But, nonetheless, I believe most everyone at the table derived pleasure from these wines, and while a little gawky and awkward, were approachable enough to get a decent sense of the vintage while at the same time retaining a distinctively Burgundy characteristic that no one would mistake as New World.

Unfortunately, I left my notes at the restaurant, so I am working off my memory. If I have made any mistakes with regard to the names of the wines, corrections would be appreciated.

The Red Burgundies were tasted single-blind.

Whites

2000 Trimbach Pinot Gris Hommage a Jeanne: I didn't care for it initially, but with air it blossomed into a melange of apples and pears with a touch of sweetness. However, there was distinctive crisp minerality to the wine as well. Fulsome, rich, and intensely flavored. I wish I had some in my cellar.

1996 J.J. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese: All elegance and grace, especially in comparison to the power of the Trimbach. Having had a couple of Prums now, there is this distinctive signature I always pick up from their Wehlener wines...a certain honeyed apple note, I suppose, but it is hard for me to describe. I'm not sure whether this is a product of house style or terroir (perhaps both), but I found it again in this wine.

2009 Red Burgundies

Pavelot Aloxe-Corton: Meh. It seemed simple to me.

Chandon de Briailles PV Iles de Vergelesses: Young and tannic, but the quality of the underlying material was apparent. I'm guessing the backwardness of this wine, at least with respect to the others at the table, can be attributed to the stems.

Hospice de Beaune Beaune 1er Cru Grèves Cuvée Pierre Floquet (Maison Drouhin): A little oaky. I liked it regardless, though weirdly, less so with air.

Pierre Guillemot Savigny les Beaune Les Jarrons: A little closed on the nose initially, especially in comparison to the first three wines. However, with time in the glass, it really bloomed. It had a certain herbal, medicinal streak to it that really distinguished it from the grapey-ness of the other wines.

Pousse d'Or Volnay Le Clos de la Pousse d'Or: Good wine. Focused and precise. I enjoyed it.

Alain Michelot Nuits St. Georges Les St. Georges: Good. Nice stuff.

Henri Gouges Nuits St. Georges Clos de Porrets: Weightless, ethereal, and absolutely lovely. The tannins were well managed and in check. To me, it was drinking very well. I think it surprised everyone that this was a Gouges wine, considering their reputation for making wines that are backwards when young. I guess the stories of a stylistic change for this producer are true, at least with respect to their lower tier Premier Crus and not the Les St. Georges and Vaucrains. This was my favorite wine of the night.

Remoissenet Savigny les Beaune Les Serpentiere: Big, lush, and fruit forward, at least to my palate. Others liked this quite a bit. While this was enjoyable, it was not really my cup of tea.

Cecile Tremblay Morey St. Denis Les Tres Girard: I liked this village wine quite a bit, but I was a little palate fatigued by the time I got to this. Others picked up some spritz, presumably from CO2. However, this wine was certainly elegant and light on its feet. I would like to revisit it some day.

Dinner at Lavandou was great (lamb chops and red burg, yum) and the company was even better. Thanks Maureen for setting this up!
 
Michelot made some nice 09s.

I don't recall post malo pH on ile des vergelesses in 09, but a couple of other wines in the cellar were st 3.4 and I think this was even lower. Low for the vintage, from what I recall.
 
originally posted by Yule Kim:
The consensus at the table was that, while the '09s were grapey and young, they weren't overripe or overly fruited as a general rule.
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I don't have enough experience with the vintage to weigh in on these debates but concerning this tasting there is obviously a selection bias in terms of the wines sampled.

But sounds like fun. I haven't had a Gouges wine post 2005 but would like to.
 
So you don't think other wine lovers with different preferences could have put together a tasting of good wines that showed more ripeness and 'fruit'.

I know this selection wasn't all Gouges and Chandon de Briailles, they also had Pousse d'Or. But still, my main point is that these folks have good taste. Which is distinct and not universal.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
So you don't think other wine lovers with different preferences could have put together a tasting of good wines that showed more ripeness and 'fruit'.
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I suppose the question is whether a group determined to do that would end up with a lineup substantially closer than ours to the stereotype of the vintage promulgated by some wine board posters. Based on what I've tasted so far, I'm inclined to doubt it.
 
Ok. I really have no concern about this particular vintage. All I wanted to do was compliment you folks on your taste!
 
originally posted by Yule Kim:

2000 Trimbach Pinot Gris Hommage a Jeanne: I didn't care for it initially, but with air it blossomed into a melange of apples and pears with a touch of sweetness. However, there was distinctive crisp minerality to the wine as well. Fulsome, rich, and intensely flavored.
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Interesting tasting, Yule! Thanks for the information (it looks like a fun evening, too). I'm not trying to pick on you, but I don't think that your use of this word (in bold) corresponds to its modern-day definition.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Yule Kim:

2000 Trimbach Pinot Gris Hommage a Jeanne: I didn't care for it initially, but with air it blossomed into a melange of apples and pears with a touch of sweetness. However, there was distinctive crisp minerality to the wine as well. Fulsome, rich, and intensely flavored.
Click to expand...

Interesting tasting, Yule! Thanks for the information (it looks like a fun evening, too). I'm not trying to pick on you, but I don't think that your use of this word (in bold) corresponds to its modern-day definition.

Mark Lipton
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I stand corrected. I used fulsome in the sense of abundance and expressive, but i didnt realize that was a problematic usage until just now. Thanks for the heads up.
 
Some general remarks, directed at a bunch of posts here, including the original.

I think what may be described as "austere" is the fact that the 09s have become increasingly tannic since they've been in bottle for a few months. I give full credit to one WD lurker ( OK, technically post count = 0, comment count = 3 ) for pointing out to me that they would become this tannic while tasting from barrel with me and putting up with my naive observations that the wines were, with some notable exceptions, shapeless, soft and often alcoholic. Whether this fits a disorderly definition of what is inherently austere is up for discussion, one which I would welcome. Does throwing some tannin on top of plush fruit make a wine austere?

As far as selection bias goes, I found the vintage so wildly unpredictable and inconsistent, cellar to cellar, wine to wine, that I could almost declassify such bias as noise.

Tremblay is good. Just shows that some people in Burgundy still know how to make excellent wine with lots of new oak. I think some old guy in her family used to do that.

Speaking of oak, please remember that the bottlers are Hospice wines aren't the ones who are the termites. At least not in this case.
 
Thanks for writing up a great set of notes, Yule. Thanks, too, to Maureen, who put a fair amount of work into setting this up as a single-blind tasting, and Mimi, for setting up the numbered notes pages. The parlor game of trying to assign wines to producers was a useful way to get more learning out of the event.

I wish I'd had your good sense to go back and try the Trimbach again later in the evening. The Guillemot, which was a popular un-favorite before and during dinner, when it tasted like brick, shone fairly brightly the next evening: tons of acidity, ample fine tannins, a whack of mocha, with a sense of much still in reserve. Happily, Keith's subsequent CT note should help to keep pricing for this wine down :)

The Chandon was my WOTN, more because of its overall intensity than any particular flavor or aroma; I liked the Michelot for similar reasons. The Pousse d'Or and Gouges were also highlights, though I thought the Volnay smelled more CdN than CdB (based on my limited experience). The Pavelot may have been simple, but it had a lovely nose from the start and became quite approachable after half and hour in the glass. I think its only flaw was finding itself in the company of too many over-performing premiers.

A highlight of the evening was the good and engaging company, without which the pleasure of the food and wine would have been much less than it was.
 
originally posted by .sasha:
Some general remarks, directed at a bunch of posts here, including the original.

... Does throwing some tannin on top of plush fruit make a wine austere?
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This seems a bit like asking whether a wine with RS, that tastes dry because of high acidity, is a dry wine. (As my son keeps telling, lemons have more sugar than strawberries). If the tannins are foremost when you are tasting, the impression will be one of austerity, no? With respect to the long-term, I gather (more from reading than experience) the mantra is 'balance,' and the question whether the fruit is substantial enough to be there down the road when the tannins loosen up.

Keith spoke rather eloquently towards the end of the evening on the quality of the tannins in the wines we tasted, relative to those in young 05 red Burgundy.

...

Tremblay is good. Just shows that some people in Burgundy still know how to make excellent wine with lots of new oak. I think some old guy in her family used to do that.
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There was some ambivalence about the Tremblay, one participant thinking it was flawed, another ascribing its characteristics to a wine-making style akin to Fourrier's, including bottling with a lot of carbon. My personal experience with wines made this way (which is very small) is that they need quite a lot of air time to make sense out of when young. Would have been nice to sample this wine again the following day.

Speaking of oak, please remember that the bottlers are Hospice wines aren't the ones who are the termites. At least not in this case.
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Huh?
 
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
bottling with a lot of carbon.
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I interpret you to mean the dioxide, but you make me think of a batch of bamboo coffee filters I have that let fine grounds through into my morning cup.
 
Ian, Hospice wines are substantially oaked prior to the auction.

I can only guess what Keith had in mind when discussing 09 tannins vs those from 05, but once again it's a total crapshoot. Yes, there were cellars with isolated wines that displayed some of the finest tannins I had ever encountered. And there were others (particularly when retasting from bottle in the early part of this winter) that would make 2010 Bordeaux look tame in comparison.
 
I haven't tasted enough 2009s yet to have a definite opinion on the vintage character, but it happens that a lot of the '09s I've had are wines I am familiar with from other vintages, so it's been hard not to start forming some opinions.

The popular knock on the vintage is that it's a "ripe" one, by which people implicitly mean "overripe." But I haven't had a single 2009 yet that tastes more ripe than its 2005 counterpart. The fruit is less dense and less saturated. The fruit complexion is more red and seldom shows much blue or black character. The tannins are also less refined and fine-grained, but on the other hand they're not edgy or abrasive either. I guess you could say, think cashmere instead of lace.

.sasha's description sounds right to me. Soft and plush - almost always. Shapeless - sometimes. I don't think they're wines that can seduce with texture alone, the way the '05s did on release. But they do seem to have pretty good balance and proportion. I don't think I've found any to be overly alcoholic, nor do they strike me as fat. If you are fishing for signs of sur-maturité you'll find sucking-candy scents in some of the wines, but I haven't had any yet that crossed the line into jamminess, and even that candied character seems to disappear or dissipate if you have leftovers to go back to the next day.

Anyway, my main conviction is that this is a vintage a lot of people are going to miss out on because they've decided in advance that slamming it makes them one of the cool kids.
 
Thanks for posting notes, Yule.

I think the tasting, limited in selection though it was, was instructive because it demonstrated the disconnect between popular belief and truth - almost like political debate! And I realize Yule repeated a comment by Cristi re: austerity but really no one there - or in this thread - found the wines austere, even when tannins were apparent. I certainly don't think throwing tannins on top of plush fruit makes a wine seem austere - in fact, I'd venture that the Gouges has plenty of tannins, albeit fine ones, on top of the fruit. I'd call that balanced, not austere.

And, yes, the point was well-made during the tasting, when I correctly identified the Hospice wine as the Hospice wine, that due to the fact that the Hospice (including employees and consultants) is in charge of the wine production, including putting the juice into barrels, until a month or so after harvest and then sells the barrels at the auction to the negociants who take over the elevage, all of the wines come in new oak. So even though the negociant might transfer it immediately upon possession, there's some new oak "taint" that is simply due to the nature of the business operations of the Hospice and not to the cellar practices of the negociant. As it happens, I found that wine to be quite excellent, despite the oak because the quality of the fruit and tannins and acidity suggest to me that the wine will absorb that oak with no problem.

I liked the Guillemont much more than Keith did, that's for sure. Loved the Gouges, really liked the Beaune, found the CdB a bit tough, perhaps due to the stems -- or maybe even the austerity of the fruit battling the stems and tannin! It was my offering too. Liked the Les St George very much but don't expect a Gouges-type (or even Chevillon-like) presentation of LSG. I think I've read somewhere that those vines are a bit youthful so maybe that's why.

Oh, and the Prum was excellent, having soaked up much of its sugar and showing real balance and elegance. The trimbach was terrific - I love that wine and brought the bottle because I'd heard that it was aging too quickly but this bottle showed no sign of advanced age - youthful color and bright fruit instead.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
bottling with a lot of carbon.
Click to expand...
I interpret you to mean the dioxide, but you make me think of a batch of bamboo coffee filters I have that let fine grounds through into my morning cup.
Click to expand...

I was just trying to relate faithfully the wording of the speaker, whom I recall talking about 'carbon' - but I didn't make a tape and could be mistaken. Anyway, better coffee filters than cigarette filters, I guess.

originally posted by .sasha:
Ian, Hospice wines are substantially oaked prior to the auction.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought you meant, but the termite reference threw me.
 
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