Singular wines

originally posted by fatboy:
and which was the last "terroir" driven burgundian cellar you walked into where the winemaking differences between the villages, the 1ers and the gcs weren't as clear as the nose on your chubby face?

...

as it is, there are not that many growers i can think of where the differences between the lesser and higher cuvees lie almost exclusively in the vineyards rather than the cellar. i hold them in extremely high esteem, and i love their wines, but in almost every case, they are definitely not taking the easy road when it comes to the market.
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I have only visited Burgundy once. I saw six cellars: Fourrier, Mugneret, Burguet, Ardhuy, Dujac, and Chandon de Briailles. Leave aside Ardhuy as I did not meet the winemaker there.

In each place I saw the equipment and heard from the makers about what they did (in 2007). There is certainly fiddle-faddle going on: Fourrier publishes maybe a dozen wines but he owns 40 properties, Mugneret chaptalizes whether the wine needs it or not, plenty of field differences (horse vs tractor, clones vs massale, pick early or late, etc).

None said they treat this batch of grapes different from that batch of grapes. The game can only be won in the vineyard (one said it in that many words while two others implied it).

Re your last question, I think my perception is skewed because I visited only thoughtful, top-shelf kind of folks.
 
If you want someone who tries as hard as possible to treat each wine the same so that difference represents solely terroir (in theory), Mugnier is your man.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
If you want someone who tries as hard as possible to treat each wine the same so that difference represents solely terroir (in theory), Mugnier is your man.
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Jesse Kawananakoa, the winemaker at Tedeschi/Ulupalakua Ranch, is also very much of this school.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

Re your last question, I think my perception is skewed because I visited only thoughtful, top-shelf kind of folks.
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the thoughtful, top-shelf kind of folks you cite -- dujac, chandon, ardhuy -- all make their fancy shit differently to their cheap shit. which means they are very much running with the herd, not against it.

fb.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
If you want someone who tries as hard as possible to treat each wine the same so that difference represents solely terroir (in theory), Mugnier is your man.
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my experience is less than yours, but from what i've seen, i think you are spot on. mugnier is definitely following a singular path.

fb.
 
True. The barrel for CdB Savigny is 15 years old, and the one for Bressandes is 12. Also one faces East, the other West.
 
originally posted by .sasha:
True. The barrel for CdB Savigny is 15 years old, and the one for Bressandes is 12. Also one faces East, the other West.
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you know i'm not buying. the concept of cdb is a wonderful one.

is it my fault that the wines are always meh?

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originally posted by fatboy:
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

Re your last question, I think my perception is skewed because I visited only thoughtful, top-shelf kind of folks.
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the thoughtful, top-shelf kind of folks you cite -- dujac, chandon, ardhuy -- all make their fancy shit differently to their cheap shit. which means they are very much running with the herd, not against it.

fb.
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could you explain more, what do they do differently?
 
depends on who we are talking about: degree of chaptalization, amount new oak, inclusion of stems (dujac), etc.

there's nothing wrong with any of this stuff. it just means that when you taste through the wines, there are more cues to origins (and price) than terroir.

fb.
 
originally posted by fatboy:
originally posted by .sasha:
True. The barrel for CdB Savigny is 15 years old, and the one for Bressandes is 12. Also one faces East, the other West.
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you know i'm not buying. the concept of cdb is a wonderful one.

is it my fault that the wines are always meh?

fb.
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No, the fault is entirely mine. I'll try to remedy.
 
originally posted by fatboy:
depends on who we are talking about: degree of chaptalization, amount new oak, inclusion of stems (dujac), etc.

there's nothing wrong with any of this stuff. it just means that when you taste through the wines, there are more cues to origins (and price) than terroir.

fb.
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I told JS on multiple occasions that gruenchers was my favourite wine in the cellar, and he understands, you know, in a sense that ferrari isn't necessarily better than a beemer. Not that he is going to do anything about it, at least not overnight. I do think he is inching (centimetering?) in the right direction though.
 
originally posted by .sasha:

No, the fault is entirely mine. I'll try to remedy.
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i thought my putting cdb in that list might get a response.

as i said, conceptually, i'm all ears.

fb.
 
originally posted by fatboy:
originally posted by .sasha:

No, the fault is entirely mine. I'll try to remedy.
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i thought my putting cdb in that list might get a response.

as i said, conceptually, i'm all ears.

fb.
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You've put CdB on those lists before. I do pay attention to fatposts.

We'll sort this one out. My guess it will come down to high risk high reward type of thing.
 
originally posted by .sasha:


I told JS on multiple occasions that gruenchers was my favourite wine in the cellar, and he understands, you know, in a sense that ferrari isn't necessarily better than a beemer.
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funny. i was trying figure out how many times i've read something like, "just not enough stuffing for an X cru," followed by some risible number of prongs, and nodded along like a dumbass.

Not that he is going to do anything about it, at least not overnight. I do think he is inching (centimetering?) in the right direction though.
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it's a tough ask. i think the whole culture of tasting works against it. in my experience with wines that approximate my own ideal on this, if i first taste wine A, and then try B (from the better terroir), my first thought is always that there is hardly any difference. it's only when i go back to A, and find that it suddenly tastes clumsy in comparison that i really start to appreciate B.

given that you have to get the punters to put their hands in the pockets and hand over the zlotys, adding a little more wood, and doing a little more extraction -- turning up the "extra" -- seems like the sane option to me.

fb.
 
Claude, in the cellar perhaps, but my impression is that pruning, amongst other things (canopy management in summer, spraying, harvest), differs from plot to plot.
 
originally posted by fatboy:
depends on who we are talking about: degree of chaptalization, amount new oak, inclusion of stems (dujac), etc.
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Any thoughts on Pacalet? Recently compared the Chambolle Villages to Premier Cru in two vintages and found the difference slight in 08, greater in 07, but no sense that the latter difference came from any of the above (though stems play a part in semi-carbonic). In both cases, I experienced some degree of "it's only when i go back to A, and find that it suddenly tastes clumsy in comparison that i really start to appreciate B."
 
originally posted by fatboy:

there's nothing wrong with any of this stuff. it just means that when you taste through the wines, there are more cues to origins (and price) than terroir.

fb.
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I find this a reductivist notion of terroir. If the site allows for better grapes, it allows for different vinification. Terroir, in my estimation, should include practices developed over many generations.
 
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