originally posted by Levi Dalton:
originally posted by Ian Fitzsimmons:
I'd really like to know if well-grown, well-raised Aligoté normally tastes like the Ponsot. I'm drinking the last mouthful as I write, and it just kicks ass. I'll start buying de Villaine by the case if it develops along this trajectory.
Ok, I'll chime in. The difference in vine age between Ponsot and de Villaine is significant. With the Ponsot you are talking about vines around 100 years old. With the de Villaine, you are not. That said, the farming at Ponsot maybe isn't the ideal in the Platonic sense. It is also worth noting, and really this is something to think about, that Morey-Saint-Denis and Bouzeron are really not close to each other. If you were talking about Chardonnay, I don't think you would be asking if this Rully you were thinking about was going to be the same with some age as this Nuits-Saint-Georges Blanc or Vougeot Blanc you've had. The location also affects the vine material in the selection, which was often by general area.
All that said, I've had de Villaine Aligoté back into the 1980s, and those wines aged well. Very well. But there are some differences in how they were made in that era and today. Some would say they've changed for the better, I'm sure. The vineyard area concerned is also different for de Villaine today, in terms of size.
If you wanted something more akin to the Ponsot, I would point you to the old vine Aligote planted around Dijon, of which there are still relatively a lot of parcels. So you see someone like Sylvain Pataille making several different Aligote from parcels around 100 years old or more. The winemaking at Pataille is of course different than at Ponsot.
Some might say better.
