99 Potel Taillepieds, 93 d'Angerville Champans

R

Rahsaan

Rahsaan
As many of you will remember, a few weeks ago I was wringing my hands and gnashing my synapses over a couple of red Burgundy purchases. This was what I ended up buying.

1999 Potel Volnay Taille Pieds
Starts off light acidic and diffuse but after a few hours of air starts to put on welcome weight. At its best it shows juicy deep and ripe controlled fruit with well-framed elegant acids and tannin. However, those moments of clarity are all too rare and for the most part it is still forming itself and probably only has future upside.

1993 d'Angerville Volnay Champans
More evolved than the 99 Potel but also needs several hours of air to start to gain a semblance of composure. Eventually it begins to approximate the seductive silk we all seek, with a sweet texture and very firm tannins. That said, it is also constantly shape shifting, and while it provided much more pleasure than the Potel, it also probably only has future upside. Damned necessities of cellaring Burgundy!

One question on the d'Angerville concerning the oak use. It seemed to have a sweet note that stuck out a tad for me right now. Could that be oak? Something else?
 
Finally, our long WD Burgundy nightmare is over.

I don't think there was much new wood at d'Angerville in '93.
 
New wood at d'Angerville is about 20-25%. Champans has an inherent juiciness that is its terroir and contrasts with the more structured Taillepieds.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
New wood at d'Angerville is about 20-25%. Champans has an inherent juiciness that is its terroir and contrasts with the more structured Taillepieds.
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Ok, thanks. Makes sense and is good to know.
 
Very interesting to hear about a d'A '93; I was so amazed by the lack of evolution of Ducs a couple of years ago, even relative to most other 93s I own, that I completely buried the rest of the bottles.

Claude - I think new wood is about 25% now, with the new fellow in the cellar ( sorry, keep on forgetting his name ), which makes me wonder if it wasn't slightly lower back in 1993. No ?
 
originally posted by .sasha:

Claude - I think new wood is about 25% now, with the new fellow in the cellar ( sorry, keep on forgetting his name ), which makes me wonder if it wasn't slightly lower back in 1993. No ?
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I've noticed no change in the cellar or the wines since the death of Jacques d'Angerville -- do my delight and a little to my surprise.

Add on edit: it is extremely rare in the Cte d'Or to find anyone who is using below 20-25% new oak. The chief examples I can think of are de Courcel under Yves Confuron, and Chandon-de-Briailles, both of which use no new oak (at least for the reds). Clerget in Vougeot used to use none, but I cannot confirm that that is still the case. Outside of that, off the top of my head, no producer comes to mind, and that's the way it's been pretty much since I started visiting the cellars in the mid-1980s -- in fact, if anything, use of new oak at many estates is less now than it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was thought one or two American reviewers (and maybe a French one, too) who liked new oak drove the market.

In the Rhne, on the other hand, you are much more likely to find producers still who use no new oak.
 
What about Ponsot?
We just don't leave these wines long enough in general. 93s need many more years,it often seems, but lots of wines from 92, a vintage which was generally thought to be for youthful consumption, are now beautiful. Last night I had a revelatory bottle of Jadot Volnay Santenots 83, exquisite wine whose sufficient age has allowed it to kick into the corner the endless 'on dit' generalisations with which Burgundy appreciation is cursed.
 
originally posted by Tom Blach:
We just don't leave these wines long enough in general. 93s need many more years.
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Of course palates differ, but on this one I agree with you. Although for those of us just starting out with less than infinite resources, sometimes we have to take what we can get!
 
originally posted by Tom Blach:
What about Ponsot?
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Yes, I overlooked Ponsot. And Rousseau uses no new oak for the village, premier cru (except CSJ) and Charmes-Chambertin. At one point, I believe, there was also no new oak on the Mazy-Chambertin, Clos de la Roche and Ruchottes-Chambertin there, but in recent years they have been getting 20% (possibly a little more for the Ruchottes). If I recall correctly, also, Gouges at one point had no new oak, but now it is around 20%.
 
Without question-but a widespread ignorance of the way burgundy ages has helped me acquire beautiful mature bottles for infinitely less than new releases. This seems to be changing, sadly.
 
originally posted by .sasha:

Claude - I think new wood is about 25% now, with the new fellow in the cellar ( sorry, keep on forgetting his name ), which makes me wonder if it wasn't slightly lower back in 1993. No ?
Click to expand...
Visited d'Angerville this morning. New wood is about 15%; in 2007 exceptionally, it is about 20% because of the characteristics of the vintage (and possibly because yields are down, i.e., about 30 hl/ha?). The estate has been in biodynamie for the last two years.
 
D'Angerville is one of the most heavily represented producers in my cellar. That is mostly attributable to the fact that I love the wines; but it's also partially attributable to the fact that I have never had a bottle from D'Angerville that I didn't think needed a lot of additional time in the cellar to approach maturity (a bottle of the 1978 Clos de Ducs at La Tour D'Argent was still a baby a couple of years ago).
 
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