Tasting in France Feb 2010. Part 1, Beaujolais
Other posts in this series are here:
Part 4, Dive Bouteille
Part 3, Chenin & Co.
Part 2, Nantais and some Touraine
It was quite a trip this year. I got caught in Paris for business at the beginning of things and missed Texier and Brun, which saddens me quite a bit as I heard excellent things about their 2009s from other folks. But I managed to hit most of the other spots with varying degrees of intrusion by work. Unfortunately, I often wound up doing a lot of work after dinner in hotel rooms. This left me short of sleep and a bit cranky for much of the trip, and I write from the flight back to NYC with a reinforced antipathy to fucked up hipster wines. I just cant take a joke about massive va, brett, and bacterial flaws quite the way I used to. My ordinarily easygoing mood was spoiled a bit by work and sleep deprivation. Also, 2009 was a hot vintage in many of the places I visited, and it turns out to be much easier to be a hipster winemaker in a cool year.
Sure was cool this winter, though, Ill tell you. Frost on the car most mornings and some cold nights.
Apologies for the first-draft nature of these notes and the sparse commentary, but if I dont get them finished on this flight they are unlikely ever to see the light of your screen. It was a bit of a scramble at the end of the tripa strike on the TGV threatened to trap us all in the wild reaches of vitcultural France.
But enough about me. What did I find on my voyage? A bunch of things that upset me, thats what. Cranky, pissy the whole time, bitching about where Im going to find room in the cellar for some beautiful, classic, Platonic wines. Though I shouldnt bitch too muchhalf the crew was stricken by a nasty bout of norovirus at one point in the trip while I was spared. Every winemaker we visited pretty much loved 2009, and the results in many cases were persuasive. The weather was pretty great at harvest, an extended clear and dry period. As Eric said around here at some point, 2009 was a vintage where people should have been able to pick to make whatever style they wanted in the Rhone, and I think many others elsewhere also found it easy to get what they preferred.
Various places had trouble earlier in the growing seasonthe eastern Loire, Beaujolais and Burgundy saw a lot of hail. Michel Tete pulled out a newspaper from a date in the summer that I apparently failed to record, perhaps someone can remind me. Anyhow, the picture showed hailstones next to apples, comparable in size. So not everything was simple, but the harvest was great and some folks made some exceptional wines. It was certainly a much easier year most places than in 2007 or 2008.
I want some of these wines in mass quantities, in large formats, in cellar-busting caseloads. There are grand wines that will age, tasty wines that will drink young, and then some oddities that well discuss later.
Beaujolais
This was my first trip to the Beaujolais. Ive always drunk Beaujolais, but never in quite the quantity or with the attention it deserves. The price spike in Burgundy in 2005 and since has helped chase me down south to pay steadily increasing mind to gamay. It was great to get there at last. The countryside is quite beautiful, and the people I met were pretty generally an unpretentious good time. They make some mean sausage there, too.
In a move that was very useful to my understanding, we tasted in two big groupsfolks who follow some version of a Lapierre cold maceration followed by a carbonic fermentation with a submerged cap, and those who do not cold soak. In the former, we tasted Georges Descombes, his son at Coquelet, Yvon Metras, and Julie Balagny. In the latter, Michel Tete, Coudert and Desvignes. There were great wines in both camps, and I encourage you to sample widely. I later tried some Foillard under imperfect conditions that Ill mention as well. This sample excludes some very worthy Beaujolais producers, so get out there and sample widely.
The Beaujolais folk were quite sanguine about their 2009s. The typical conversation revolved around whether 2009 was better than 1991 or just comparable. I wasnt paying enough attention in 91, and have had very few of the wines in recent years, but 91 is the most famous modern vintage in the region.
G. Descombes
Georges is quite a character. He does a standard carbonic fermentation with a submerged cap, and adds a little SO2 at assemblage. His crop in 2008 was about half his usual, with rain giving a bad set in the spring and mildew in the summer. All his vines are in granite terroir, with variation as to sand or rocks or clay. Importantly, all his granite is pink. (?) Naturally enough, his sloped sites have thinner soils, and consequently have a tougher time with drought.
His 2008 Brouilly is rather deep purple, a little estery and funky,with some spritz. I didnt adore it.
The 2008 Morgon generic, OTOH has a nice savory palate and a good crunchy finish.
The 08 Brouilly VV (45-70 y.o. vines) is vivid, with bright cranberry and spice. Not a big wine, but a nice one.
His old vines Morgon (45-100 y.o.) has a deeper nose and a lot of color in 2008, though Georges has fluorescent lights in his kitchen that make color evaluation very tough. The wine is plummy, with a moderately rich, spicy nose and palate. Its medium bodied, with good acid, though the tannins are a bit hard and greenish, not unusually for the vintage.
The 2009 Brouilly VV (ex-cuve) was an approximation of the eventual assemblage, but was still working and estery. Dark, with CO2 still prominent. Its hard to tell exactly how much of the refreshing finish of this wine is from CO2 and how much from acid.
I found the approximate 2009 Regnie VV from cuve to be tough to judgeits still estery and working a bit, a little volatile, not sure what this will become.
The 09 Morgon VV also still has some fermentation aromas of esters, but has nice balance, rich fruit on the nose, a medium-bodied spicy fresh finish. As the fermentation aromas resolve and the va clears, this is a very promising wine.
The only difference in packaging on these wines between the regular and the VV is the wax capsule on the latter. The general view is that labels are expensive and you dont run around printing a bunch of different ones.
Coquelet
Georges son Damien has his own vineyards, but makes his wine in considerable cooperation with his father. His 09 Beaujolais Villages from Lancier, Ville, and Courcelle is funky and has lots of CO2, but is nice stuff. They will degas it with Argon before bottling.
His 09 regular Chiroubles was funky and hard for me to read.
Damien has Cte du Py vines from the retired Savoye (who is still very much alive). Hes a cousin of the Descombes/Coquelet crew and rents his vines to Damien as well as a couple of other young winemakers. There was a detailed discussion of the terms of metoyage in the Beaujolais and various recent innovations in the arrangements, but Ill spare you. The Descombes think that Savoyes vineyard work was not quite up to their standard, but not far off. Savoye understands that they will prune tighter and that yields will be lower than his but is OK with this.
The 2009 VV Cte du Py is remarkabledeep everything. Color, fruit, structure, the works. Its a ripe vintage and acid is not high, but a ripe full midpalate, a long powerful finish, very tasty wine for the medium term.
The 09 Chiroubles VV was slightly reduced and funky, savory and ripe, seemed nice but a little hard to judge now.
Julie Balagny has moved back to the Beaujolais from the South, where she made fine wine somewhere Ive forgotten. Her branding is off to a good startall her hair is less than 1 cm long, its a distinctive look.
Her Fleurie JV (25-30 y.o.) comes from a 3.2 ha parcel high in Pic Remont where its southern exposure and site in a cul gives high daytime temperatures and the slopes dry fast, but the elevation keeps nights cool. In 2009 the vines gave a moderately colored wine with a very pretty nose that still has a bit of estery fermentation aromas and CO2, but it seems like a contender. Repeated hail limit this cuvee to 8500 bottles.
Yvon Metras makes wine but hates to export it, so this report is probably just a tease for my American readers. His 2009 Fleurie from very young vines is pretty and ripe, with light body and extract, a little CO2, and so on. A very pretty wine on a smaller scale. This is a degassed sample and will be the base of his spring release.
An assemblage of his 2009 Fleurie VV is ripe with excellent depth of aroma and flavor, medium rich with a light structure, moderate ripe acids. Its a pretty wine for the near term, with a bit of va currently but well see. He had a nonsensical story about how the ethyl acetate producing yeasts usually come at the beginning of fermentation and unusually came at the end this year. He saw very little early. Parenthetically, I find it very unlikely that a yeast that usually lives in 23 brix must with 1 or 2% alcohol would instead show up for the party when the wine was going dry and had 12+%. Anyhow.
The next day we gathered in the cellar at Michel Tete. I missed the white wines of Jean Manciat as I borrowed the Tetes Internet connection, since the frozen wasteland of a hotel wed stayed in the night before in Julienas had no functional wifi and I had a bunch of work to send out. He has a really cool Miss Beaujolais calendar in his bathroom with each month represented by a different Miss Morgon or Miss Chiroubles. Anyhow, I showed up just as
Michel Tete
began to pour his 2009 Beaujolais Villages, which was insanely good wine. Its semi-carbonic and always undergoes MLF. Its high up (350m) and is always his last site picked. The 2008 was a little tough and hard in comparison.
His 2009 St. Amour (all planted 1976) was picked at 15* potential, fermented for 17 days with a submerged cap, and had finished MLF by the time we tasted. Its powerful, fruity, and a bit too much for me right now. I dont believe the US importer takes this.
The 2009 Julienas had only a 10 day maceration to limit extraction a bit. It is big and ripe with dusty tannins, a bit OTT. I didnt adore it. There was another Julienas to be sold in Belgium that was simpler and more alcoholic.
The 2009 Julienas VV will be 1/3 of the assembled wine (blended with the above), was quite delicious. Great fruit, nice structure, first rate. Hes never been my favorite producer, but this will be a good wine.
The 08 Julienas isnt bad, but I dont thrill to it.
His 2007 Julienas Prestige is from a 1.5 ha parcel of 70-100 y.o. vines. Its really pretty: silky, suave, stylish. You can taste the influence of the wood in the texture and a bit in the flavors of the wine. He only does an 8-10 day maceration since the old vines give plenty of extract. Half the wine goes into vat, half into barrels, 1/3 of which have been renewed.
He and several other winemakers felt that the 2006s were underestimated after 2005 but have really come along, while the 2005s are a bit hard. Im leaving my 2005s alone, personally.
His 2006 Julienas Prestige is sweet, stylin, has all its parts in place. Michel thinks its for the long haul, that you could drink it for many years.
There is a Tete de Cuvee (hahaha) in 2006. He destems and does a Burgundian fermentation in an open wood vat with pigeage and ages in vat and barrel. He says that controlling va in this style is a challenge. The wine has deep savory fruit and some visible wood. To me, it seems less mineral. I like it less now, but it might age into something vvg. This turns out to be Tetes intent with the wine.
At lunch we had a faboo bottle of 1991 Tete Prestige that could convert you.
Coudert
Coudert has 13 ha, of which one is Brouilly and the rest Fleurie. In Brouilly, the Cote de Brouilly is the top of the slope, Brouilly at the bottom. The hillside has sand and gallets, something like Graves. It is well-drained and deep, giving fruity and easy wines.
In 2009 he had a bit of rain every couple of weeks headed into the harvest that kept the vines happy and kept the vines from surmaturite, though he wouldnt tell us his alcohol levels, hahahaha.
The 2009 Brouilly is beautiful, ripe with big strawberry and plum fruite, not dried at all. Its powerful (OK, he dishesits 14.4%).
Apparently if you want to sell your wine to negoce in Brouilly (as most do), you do a thermovinification that rapidly extracts color and fruity. There was general consternation that this process was utterly silly in 2009 since the wines had so much color and fruit anyway.
Couderts regular Fleurie is 50% Roillette, 15% from lieu-dit Champagne and the rest from Deduits. This is the normal cuvee. The vines are mostly 40 years old. His father took over a poorly managed vineyard and had to do a lot of replanting. I can tell you the horse story but you probably already know it.
The regular 09 is totally brilliant. Unusually rich for this wine, but it has good acid and structure and is only 13.2%.
The Tardive (a bit of a joke on Beaujolais Nouveau) is one parcel. In 2009 the wine is less aromatically effusive than the regular, but it shows perfect ripeness, intensity, and my notes say, Jesus what a finish. Great richness, balance, lovely acidity, great fine-textured tannic balance and structure. I asked him to bottle some for me in 3L format.
In 08 they had to do a serious sort at picking and again when the grapes came in. They destemmed the bunches with unripe stems, about half.
The 08 regular Fleurie has more spice and cherry from the destemmed grapes, which is curious because I often associate spicy flavors in Burgundy from wine fermented in whole clusters. Coudert thinks this wine is more Burgundian than most vintages and I would agree. It lacks the depth of the 09s but is quite nice.
In 08 he didnt need to destem the Tardive since the old vines gave better ripeness and less rot. It is more structured and has a curious texture in the finish. Its a little light for this wine, and puzzled me.
2007 had a slow start and a very slow summer. The flowering to harvest time is classically 100 days, and in recent warm vintages has trended down to 95 days, but in 2007 it was 110. The warm September saved them. The 2007 regular is classic, very pretty. Really great stuff. The 07 Tardive is spectacular. I may not have quite enough of it in my cellar.
Desvignes
The new generation is more involved at Desvignes, but the wines still seem quite classic. They make wines to age, not to flatter young, although they do a semi-carbonic fermentation with submerged cap. They ferment and age exclusively in concrete. They pump over at the end of fermentation to get the last sugars dry. Their Cte du Py is from the upper part of the slope with schist and slate over rotten rock, with 60-90 y.o. vines. Since 2006 they only plough it. The Javernieres is the lower slope of the Cte du Py. It has a lot of clay and can bake solid in the summer, making it hard to work.
The 2009 Cte du Py had a 14 day maceration and is a totally brilliant rich textured wine to keep. Im a buyer. They will bottle it after 10 months in tank.
The Javernieres has a gorgeous nose and fabulous richness. Its a deeper, darker wine than the Py, but both of them are quite excellent. In 2009 yields were only 30 hl/ha so the upper and lower parcels of Javernieres are blended and there will be only a single cuvee, much to the relief of the importers to the US.
The 2008 Cte du Py was bottled in 11/09. It was a short crop, only 25 hl/ha. Oddly, they didnt get an MLF until the 2009 harvest. They destemmed it all since the stems were injured by hail. Its ripe at 13% and a nice wine. 13%
The 2008 Javernieres will be bottled next month. It is pretty good stuff, but is a bit lean and shows its bones a bit. 12.8%.
In 2007 the Cte du Py has a big, big nose of lovely spicy fruit. Good balance, acidity, and fine tannins should see this wine into middle age. The Javernieres is deeper and richer. I should get a fewit should age well in the medium term.
Other posts in this series are here:
Part 4, Dive Bouteille
Part 3, Chenin & Co.
Part 2, Nantais and some Touraine
It was quite a trip this year. I got caught in Paris for business at the beginning of things and missed Texier and Brun, which saddens me quite a bit as I heard excellent things about their 2009s from other folks. But I managed to hit most of the other spots with varying degrees of intrusion by work. Unfortunately, I often wound up doing a lot of work after dinner in hotel rooms. This left me short of sleep and a bit cranky for much of the trip, and I write from the flight back to NYC with a reinforced antipathy to fucked up hipster wines. I just cant take a joke about massive va, brett, and bacterial flaws quite the way I used to. My ordinarily easygoing mood was spoiled a bit by work and sleep deprivation. Also, 2009 was a hot vintage in many of the places I visited, and it turns out to be much easier to be a hipster winemaker in a cool year.
Sure was cool this winter, though, Ill tell you. Frost on the car most mornings and some cold nights.
Apologies for the first-draft nature of these notes and the sparse commentary, but if I dont get them finished on this flight they are unlikely ever to see the light of your screen. It was a bit of a scramble at the end of the tripa strike on the TGV threatened to trap us all in the wild reaches of vitcultural France.
But enough about me. What did I find on my voyage? A bunch of things that upset me, thats what. Cranky, pissy the whole time, bitching about where Im going to find room in the cellar for some beautiful, classic, Platonic wines. Though I shouldnt bitch too muchhalf the crew was stricken by a nasty bout of norovirus at one point in the trip while I was spared. Every winemaker we visited pretty much loved 2009, and the results in many cases were persuasive. The weather was pretty great at harvest, an extended clear and dry period. As Eric said around here at some point, 2009 was a vintage where people should have been able to pick to make whatever style they wanted in the Rhone, and I think many others elsewhere also found it easy to get what they preferred.
Various places had trouble earlier in the growing seasonthe eastern Loire, Beaujolais and Burgundy saw a lot of hail. Michel Tete pulled out a newspaper from a date in the summer that I apparently failed to record, perhaps someone can remind me. Anyhow, the picture showed hailstones next to apples, comparable in size. So not everything was simple, but the harvest was great and some folks made some exceptional wines. It was certainly a much easier year most places than in 2007 or 2008.
I want some of these wines in mass quantities, in large formats, in cellar-busting caseloads. There are grand wines that will age, tasty wines that will drink young, and then some oddities that well discuss later.
Beaujolais
This was my first trip to the Beaujolais. Ive always drunk Beaujolais, but never in quite the quantity or with the attention it deserves. The price spike in Burgundy in 2005 and since has helped chase me down south to pay steadily increasing mind to gamay. It was great to get there at last. The countryside is quite beautiful, and the people I met were pretty generally an unpretentious good time. They make some mean sausage there, too.
In a move that was very useful to my understanding, we tasted in two big groupsfolks who follow some version of a Lapierre cold maceration followed by a carbonic fermentation with a submerged cap, and those who do not cold soak. In the former, we tasted Georges Descombes, his son at Coquelet, Yvon Metras, and Julie Balagny. In the latter, Michel Tete, Coudert and Desvignes. There were great wines in both camps, and I encourage you to sample widely. I later tried some Foillard under imperfect conditions that Ill mention as well. This sample excludes some very worthy Beaujolais producers, so get out there and sample widely.
The Beaujolais folk were quite sanguine about their 2009s. The typical conversation revolved around whether 2009 was better than 1991 or just comparable. I wasnt paying enough attention in 91, and have had very few of the wines in recent years, but 91 is the most famous modern vintage in the region.
G. Descombes
Georges is quite a character. He does a standard carbonic fermentation with a submerged cap, and adds a little SO2 at assemblage. His crop in 2008 was about half his usual, with rain giving a bad set in the spring and mildew in the summer. All his vines are in granite terroir, with variation as to sand or rocks or clay. Importantly, all his granite is pink. (?) Naturally enough, his sloped sites have thinner soils, and consequently have a tougher time with drought.
His 2008 Brouilly is rather deep purple, a little estery and funky,with some spritz. I didnt adore it.
The 2008 Morgon generic, OTOH has a nice savory palate and a good crunchy finish.
The 08 Brouilly VV (45-70 y.o. vines) is vivid, with bright cranberry and spice. Not a big wine, but a nice one.
His old vines Morgon (45-100 y.o.) has a deeper nose and a lot of color in 2008, though Georges has fluorescent lights in his kitchen that make color evaluation very tough. The wine is plummy, with a moderately rich, spicy nose and palate. Its medium bodied, with good acid, though the tannins are a bit hard and greenish, not unusually for the vintage.
The 2009 Brouilly VV (ex-cuve) was an approximation of the eventual assemblage, but was still working and estery. Dark, with CO2 still prominent. Its hard to tell exactly how much of the refreshing finish of this wine is from CO2 and how much from acid.
I found the approximate 2009 Regnie VV from cuve to be tough to judgeits still estery and working a bit, a little volatile, not sure what this will become.
The 09 Morgon VV also still has some fermentation aromas of esters, but has nice balance, rich fruit on the nose, a medium-bodied spicy fresh finish. As the fermentation aromas resolve and the va clears, this is a very promising wine.
The only difference in packaging on these wines between the regular and the VV is the wax capsule on the latter. The general view is that labels are expensive and you dont run around printing a bunch of different ones.
Coquelet
Georges son Damien has his own vineyards, but makes his wine in considerable cooperation with his father. His 09 Beaujolais Villages from Lancier, Ville, and Courcelle is funky and has lots of CO2, but is nice stuff. They will degas it with Argon before bottling.
His 09 regular Chiroubles was funky and hard for me to read.
Damien has Cte du Py vines from the retired Savoye (who is still very much alive). Hes a cousin of the Descombes/Coquelet crew and rents his vines to Damien as well as a couple of other young winemakers. There was a detailed discussion of the terms of metoyage in the Beaujolais and various recent innovations in the arrangements, but Ill spare you. The Descombes think that Savoyes vineyard work was not quite up to their standard, but not far off. Savoye understands that they will prune tighter and that yields will be lower than his but is OK with this.
The 2009 VV Cte du Py is remarkabledeep everything. Color, fruit, structure, the works. Its a ripe vintage and acid is not high, but a ripe full midpalate, a long powerful finish, very tasty wine for the medium term.
The 09 Chiroubles VV was slightly reduced and funky, savory and ripe, seemed nice but a little hard to judge now.
Julie Balagny has moved back to the Beaujolais from the South, where she made fine wine somewhere Ive forgotten. Her branding is off to a good startall her hair is less than 1 cm long, its a distinctive look.
Her Fleurie JV (25-30 y.o.) comes from a 3.2 ha parcel high in Pic Remont where its southern exposure and site in a cul gives high daytime temperatures and the slopes dry fast, but the elevation keeps nights cool. In 2009 the vines gave a moderately colored wine with a very pretty nose that still has a bit of estery fermentation aromas and CO2, but it seems like a contender. Repeated hail limit this cuvee to 8500 bottles.
Yvon Metras makes wine but hates to export it, so this report is probably just a tease for my American readers. His 2009 Fleurie from very young vines is pretty and ripe, with light body and extract, a little CO2, and so on. A very pretty wine on a smaller scale. This is a degassed sample and will be the base of his spring release.
An assemblage of his 2009 Fleurie VV is ripe with excellent depth of aroma and flavor, medium rich with a light structure, moderate ripe acids. Its a pretty wine for the near term, with a bit of va currently but well see. He had a nonsensical story about how the ethyl acetate producing yeasts usually come at the beginning of fermentation and unusually came at the end this year. He saw very little early. Parenthetically, I find it very unlikely that a yeast that usually lives in 23 brix must with 1 or 2% alcohol would instead show up for the party when the wine was going dry and had 12+%. Anyhow.
The next day we gathered in the cellar at Michel Tete. I missed the white wines of Jean Manciat as I borrowed the Tetes Internet connection, since the frozen wasteland of a hotel wed stayed in the night before in Julienas had no functional wifi and I had a bunch of work to send out. He has a really cool Miss Beaujolais calendar in his bathroom with each month represented by a different Miss Morgon or Miss Chiroubles. Anyhow, I showed up just as
Michel Tete
began to pour his 2009 Beaujolais Villages, which was insanely good wine. Its semi-carbonic and always undergoes MLF. Its high up (350m) and is always his last site picked. The 2008 was a little tough and hard in comparison.
His 2009 St. Amour (all planted 1976) was picked at 15* potential, fermented for 17 days with a submerged cap, and had finished MLF by the time we tasted. Its powerful, fruity, and a bit too much for me right now. I dont believe the US importer takes this.
The 2009 Julienas had only a 10 day maceration to limit extraction a bit. It is big and ripe with dusty tannins, a bit OTT. I didnt adore it. There was another Julienas to be sold in Belgium that was simpler and more alcoholic.
The 2009 Julienas VV will be 1/3 of the assembled wine (blended with the above), was quite delicious. Great fruit, nice structure, first rate. Hes never been my favorite producer, but this will be a good wine.
The 08 Julienas isnt bad, but I dont thrill to it.
His 2007 Julienas Prestige is from a 1.5 ha parcel of 70-100 y.o. vines. Its really pretty: silky, suave, stylish. You can taste the influence of the wood in the texture and a bit in the flavors of the wine. He only does an 8-10 day maceration since the old vines give plenty of extract. Half the wine goes into vat, half into barrels, 1/3 of which have been renewed.
He and several other winemakers felt that the 2006s were underestimated after 2005 but have really come along, while the 2005s are a bit hard. Im leaving my 2005s alone, personally.
His 2006 Julienas Prestige is sweet, stylin, has all its parts in place. Michel thinks its for the long haul, that you could drink it for many years.
There is a Tete de Cuvee (hahaha) in 2006. He destems and does a Burgundian fermentation in an open wood vat with pigeage and ages in vat and barrel. He says that controlling va in this style is a challenge. The wine has deep savory fruit and some visible wood. To me, it seems less mineral. I like it less now, but it might age into something vvg. This turns out to be Tetes intent with the wine.
At lunch we had a faboo bottle of 1991 Tete Prestige that could convert you.
Coudert
Coudert has 13 ha, of which one is Brouilly and the rest Fleurie. In Brouilly, the Cote de Brouilly is the top of the slope, Brouilly at the bottom. The hillside has sand and gallets, something like Graves. It is well-drained and deep, giving fruity and easy wines.
In 2009 he had a bit of rain every couple of weeks headed into the harvest that kept the vines happy and kept the vines from surmaturite, though he wouldnt tell us his alcohol levels, hahahaha.
The 2009 Brouilly is beautiful, ripe with big strawberry and plum fruite, not dried at all. Its powerful (OK, he dishesits 14.4%).
Apparently if you want to sell your wine to negoce in Brouilly (as most do), you do a thermovinification that rapidly extracts color and fruity. There was general consternation that this process was utterly silly in 2009 since the wines had so much color and fruit anyway.
Couderts regular Fleurie is 50% Roillette, 15% from lieu-dit Champagne and the rest from Deduits. This is the normal cuvee. The vines are mostly 40 years old. His father took over a poorly managed vineyard and had to do a lot of replanting. I can tell you the horse story but you probably already know it.
The regular 09 is totally brilliant. Unusually rich for this wine, but it has good acid and structure and is only 13.2%.
The Tardive (a bit of a joke on Beaujolais Nouveau) is one parcel. In 2009 the wine is less aromatically effusive than the regular, but it shows perfect ripeness, intensity, and my notes say, Jesus what a finish. Great richness, balance, lovely acidity, great fine-textured tannic balance and structure. I asked him to bottle some for me in 3L format.
In 08 they had to do a serious sort at picking and again when the grapes came in. They destemmed the bunches with unripe stems, about half.
The 08 regular Fleurie has more spice and cherry from the destemmed grapes, which is curious because I often associate spicy flavors in Burgundy from wine fermented in whole clusters. Coudert thinks this wine is more Burgundian than most vintages and I would agree. It lacks the depth of the 09s but is quite nice.
In 08 he didnt need to destem the Tardive since the old vines gave better ripeness and less rot. It is more structured and has a curious texture in the finish. Its a little light for this wine, and puzzled me.
2007 had a slow start and a very slow summer. The flowering to harvest time is classically 100 days, and in recent warm vintages has trended down to 95 days, but in 2007 it was 110. The warm September saved them. The 2007 regular is classic, very pretty. Really great stuff. The 07 Tardive is spectacular. I may not have quite enough of it in my cellar.
Desvignes
The new generation is more involved at Desvignes, but the wines still seem quite classic. They make wines to age, not to flatter young, although they do a semi-carbonic fermentation with submerged cap. They ferment and age exclusively in concrete. They pump over at the end of fermentation to get the last sugars dry. Their Cte du Py is from the upper part of the slope with schist and slate over rotten rock, with 60-90 y.o. vines. Since 2006 they only plough it. The Javernieres is the lower slope of the Cte du Py. It has a lot of clay and can bake solid in the summer, making it hard to work.
The 2009 Cte du Py had a 14 day maceration and is a totally brilliant rich textured wine to keep. Im a buyer. They will bottle it after 10 months in tank.
The Javernieres has a gorgeous nose and fabulous richness. Its a deeper, darker wine than the Py, but both of them are quite excellent. In 2009 yields were only 30 hl/ha so the upper and lower parcels of Javernieres are blended and there will be only a single cuvee, much to the relief of the importers to the US.
The 2008 Cte du Py was bottled in 11/09. It was a short crop, only 25 hl/ha. Oddly, they didnt get an MLF until the 2009 harvest. They destemmed it all since the stems were injured by hail. Its ripe at 13% and a nice wine. 13%
The 2008 Javernieres will be bottled next month. It is pretty good stuff, but is a bit lean and shows its bones a bit. 12.8%.
In 2007 the Cte du Py has a big, big nose of lovely spicy fruit. Good balance, acidity, and fine tannins should see this wine into middle age. The Javernieres is deeper and richer. I should get a fewit should age well in the medium term.
