Keith Levenberg
Keith Levenberg
YOUNG AND OLD
Ch. Leoville Poyferre 2016
Nothing subtle here. Bordeaux in boldface. Opens with a big blast of cedary aromatics that at first seems to lend it sort of a Pauillac-like personality, but at this level of intensity obviously the barrels are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. While the tannin keeps the wine taut and muscular for the first couple of sips, it doesn't take long before something snaps and it becomes characterized instead by extreme generosity. It's weighty and expansive and a big mouthful of stuff on the palate with the cedar, gravel, and metallic ore swirling around and all cranked up to 11. The focus is on these secondary elements rather than the fruit, or at least they seem to be infusing the fruit rather than being layered on top of it as it all still has a crimson, dried-cherry cast. Despite all this it's not seared with toast to the point of turning into bitter coffee grounds like some of the more extreme Rollandized vintages from 10 or 15 years ago, but it's definitely on the slutty side and with some more time even those initially muscular tannins manage to turn fluffy and plush.
Ch. Leoville Poyferre 1909
Opens with scents of an old basement and some sidewalk-stomped bubblegum. But it tastes, thankfully, better than it smells, and it cleans itself up with about 15 minutes in the glass to find its sea legs. It's extremely light-bodied in material and in literal color - down to watercolor-strength in both departments - but there's nevertheless some spirit left in it that blossoms very fully on the palate notwithstanding the only-barely-corporeal material that's left, and the texture is satisfyingly slick and smooth. The fruit is basically a distant memory - even the patina of old fruit is on the faded side - but there's some nuttiness and forest soil filling in some of the empty spaces.
Ch. Canon 2008
Powerful aromatics - heady, earthy scents fill the air just from pouring it, no swirl-and-sniff necessary. The fruit is still very youthful and I'd never have guessed this was ten years on. It's still rich with a primary sweetness though it finishes with a sharper crunch which is probably the cab franc talking, and those same earthy qualities that were so powerful in the aromas add some intrigue to the fruit with evocations of black truffle, rocks, and freshly turned soil.
Ch. Canon 1953
Much preferred to a recent '55 from the same source - it had a lot more personality to show for all that bottle age under its belt, with more of an emphasis on the tertiary stuff and the cherry fruit as the backdrop. It features generous aromas and corresponding flavor accents of acorns, white truffles, and even a bit of gaminess at the margins. Served before the Burgundy flight but the magnum left plenty to hold in the glass and follow. As is often the case the fruitier Burgundies made the clarets feel a little pale and dry in comparison, but with this one the fruit sweetness actually kept ratcheting up as it sat in the glass till it took on a profile that could almost be passably burgundian itself, helped along by its silky texture.
PICHON AND PICHON
Ch. Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande 2016
Full array of classic PLL aromatics - pitch-black fruit, cedar pencil shavings, walnuts. On the palate it delivers the same, in remarkable procession. First comes the fruit and structure, which is fairly heavy in tannin but in a way that seems to infuse the fruit rather than obscure it, then a wave of cedar, and then a wave of the nutty, more savory elements, and that's before you even swallow the thing. It's a bingo card cliche to say a wine "unfolds in three dimensions" but this one unfolds in four. I am not quite sure I am ready to pick a favorite among the prior three vintages. This is more of a bruiser, nothing like the feminine 2014 and more rugged than the 2015, with which it shares the heavier weight class. It probably has more packed into it than either, but will also probably need more time to get into its zone.
Ch. Pichon Longueville Baron 2016
Epic wine - my WOTV so far - and if you can manage to acquire enough to save some for your kids and grandkids (or great-grandkids, or your own cryogenically frozen head, this ain't cracking up anytime soon), they (or your defrosted future self) will thank you. Interestingly, for many years, the Comtesse was the more classically styled of the Pichons, but for at least the last couple vintages I've found the Baron markedly more old-school, at least if you are measuring that in terms of youthful austerity. This starts out very clenched with a serious bite (not just from tannin), but it isn't closed because it is expressive of a huge array of stuff on both nose and palate, from blackberry to cedar and sandalwood, gravel, and even a savory, succulent element reminiscent of crisp, browned chicken skin. All classic Pauillac, as the Comtesse was, but altogether more muscle-bound than the Comtesse and while both are in very dark tones fruitwise, here it comes across closer to the bleeding edge of ripeness with a nice snap and bite. And yet a couple hours later, it somehow turns cashmere-soft, so if the only thing holding it short of having it all was a shortage of first-growth refinement, somehow it manages to pull that out of its pocket too.
MORE 2016 BORDEAUX
Ch. Lynch Bages 2016
Knockout of a Lynch-Bages from the very first sip. It's packed with aromas of pitch-black fruit, cigar box, and the textbook Pauillac lead-pencil shavings. The fruit on the palate is equally intense with a saturating, tongue-staining density of black fruit with a taut, curranty snap that reminds me of the best aspects of the 2014, which adds a nice counterpoint to its rich, saucy concentration. The structure clenches up a little bit with time and the tannins turn edgier and more abrupt, but the sheer richness of the fruit ought to give this a pretty nice window of pretty thrilling drinking before it closes down.
Ch. Grand Puy Lacoste 2016
Expressive right away with scents of pencil fillings and gravel. It's deceptively easy-drinking, smooth and supple but infused with plenty of tannin. It's also infused with a cigarette smokiness so evocative that it starts feeling like a wine you'd drink in some seedy bar in a film noir while a neon "no vacancy" sign flickers overhead till you catch the eye of a dame in a long dress who spells nothing but trouble. Except that it's not entirely in B&W film stock because it does have a very fresh and pure impression of mildly zingy currant and raspberry behind that smoky gauze.
Ch. Leoville Las Cases 2016
Confounding this chateau's reputation for producing blockbuster wines, this is by far the most feminine and streamlined 2016 I've had so far, with a silky texture and slender figure more akin to elite Pomerols like Trotanoy or VCC than a left bank vin de garde - though it does approach the exquisitely elegant fashion the 1990 is displaying lately. It's also quite restrained relative to most from the vintage and particularly its nearby competition. If the Pichon-Baron is grabbing the microphone and screaming, "y'all ready to rock and roll?!" this wine is more like Morrissey. Swirling the glass coaxes out scents of cedar shavings, leading to a dark-toned but still red-fruited palate infused with just about the maximum amount of tannin a wine can possibly have and still retain a refined texture - it's as if someone had stirred in concrete powder and we got the chance to catch this just before it seizes up.
Ch. Leoville-Barton 2016
Had to give this another shot as my first bottle a few months ago was solid but I expected more out of Barton this vintage. It has definitely improved and put on some more richness with a few months to settle, though the general personality is similar with its bright, red-fruited profile, crunchy and crystalline - juicier and much brighter in tone than Barton's typical profile. Beyond that it's lightly cedary and heavily rocky and mineral, but the fruit is altogether more saturating which is nice because I had been surprised this wasn't more stuffed. Three days later it became Spectator's Wine of the Year, which I was thankful for because it didn't drive up the price of anything I hadn't bought yet, but this is pretty far from a WOTY for me and actually somewhat of a disappointment for the chateau.
Ch. Durfort-Vivens 2016
Dizzyingly complex aromas of botanicals, bramble, and a succulent, savory roastiness. There's a succulence to the fruit, too, which comes across acute and piercing in a redder, more cassis-like complexion than most of the northern Medoc properties are showing this vintage, but similarly rich and concentrated with a kiss of seared oakspice, and veering towards the black-cherry side with air. Structurally, this has been for the last few years, and continues to be, one of the more old-fashioned Bordeaux out there, but it feels a bit weird to use that term in reference to an estate doing the hip biodynamie thing. In any event, while it has a tight, clenched grip, there's enough saturation and sweetness to the fruit that it doesn't go so far as feeling austere, and the grip relaxes enough on day two to highlight the primary fruit character more. Bottom line is that this is packed with gorgeous material, built to last, and comes from a property with some serious pedigree (yes, Virginia, this is a second growth!) making its best wine in generations - which the price tag still hasn't caught up to.
Ch. Malescot-St.-Exupery 2016
This is so intensely and immediately mineral it practically turns your wine-glass into a fracking instrument and requires a hardhat. It buries you under so many layers of pulverized rock, metal shavings, and pencil fillings that it's hard to call this anything other than fruit-backward, or whatever the opposite of fruit-forward is - the fruit profile is basically the opposite of the slutty 2015, which was gushing with inky sweetness. Here, the flesh of the fruit has to be fairly well-hidden, but obviously it's in there somewhere because for all its structure and stoniness it doesn't feel too dry or austere. Still, the fruit is mostly felt in terms of precision and some refreshment at the edges and I'm hard-pressed to find any primary fruit flavors that correlate to the usual Bordeaux TN fruit salad; the dominant flavors here are from the mineral and earth, and there's such a wide spectrum of them I have to give this the edge over the 2015, but the two together have to be one of the best examples I've seen in wines from a single estate (in back-to-back vintages no less) offering a perfect compare-and-contrast between the hedonistic style and the intellectual one. Under Diam cork - thank you!
Ch. Les Carmes Haut-Brion 2016
Very fine and silky in texture. It shows you how much things have changed that a wine built like this is getting blockbuster points from the point purveyors. The fruit is restrained too, and definitely not blockbustery, although it is clipped somewhat by some reediness and very raw-tasting wood. The press doesn't seem to agree on the new oak specs; Decanter reports 80%, TWA 65% - both numbers would seem to deliver enough new wood to defeat the purpose of the small portion aged in amphorae, but usually new oak in Bordeaux makes it toasty, cedary, smoky, sweet, or whatever, and here it just feels like straight wood. On the second day the fruit had sweetened up a little bit but the wood component didn't diminish. It wasn't so aggressive that I'd be worried about it taking over in the cellar, but it was annoying enough to make this less fun than it should have been to check in now, however impressive that texture was. This could turn out very nice but it's getting a lot of hype lately and it's not living up to that.
BURGUNDY
Lucien Boillot 2016 Nuits-St.-Georges Les Pruliers
Centenarian vines. Dark cherry fruit has a saturation relative to many from the vintage that shows off that old-vine strength but also has a bit of a bitter edge. Intense stony earth is almost as intense. Pretty much a textbook showing for this bottling.
Duroche 2016 Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaut St. Jacques
Not-quite-centenarian vines, but getting pretty close to it. Drank with the Boillot (and the Jadot, below). Beautifully pure fruit here, rounder and sweeter than the Boillot and closer to pure red cherry in tone - very friendly, easy to like, and velvety. Might have taken this for a 2015, but for...
Louis Jadot 2015 Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaux St. Jacques
Close call but probably my favorite of the three because the fruit was nearly as pretty as the Duroche and the earthy qualities nearly as expressive as the Boillot. Some candied sweetness reverberates on the back end which is that 2015 ripeness poking through.
Jean Grivot 2016 Vosne-Romanee Les Chaumes
Vibrant and crunchy red-berry fruit profile here, a little bit gamay-like in its pure primary freshness and more than a little bit reminiscent of some of the pinots from Rhys that also share that quality. Seasoned with a bit of aromatic cedar, but the fruit is in the foreground. Very easy-drinking both for the producer and the vintage, at least as far as the texture and gentle structure goes, but kind of shy in terms of Vosne personality, which this site can do very well when it's on.
Bruno Clair 2015 Savigny-les-Baune La Dominode
More centenarian vines. Probably the best Clair Dominode I've ever had (and hey, these old vines are now older than they've ever been!). The color is halfway between red and rose, more of a pale rouge, yet it's absolutely packed with material in a way that comes across layered and robust while being essentially lightweight. First comes a puff of perfumed fruit mixing rose petals and a spirity essence of pale cherries, then it solidifies and a robust, stony minerality takes over. From ethereal on the entry to chiseled on the back end, there's not even a molecule of baby fat but it still has a youthful freshness and gloss.
Georges Roumier 2012 Musigny
The wine that disproves the Coase Theorem. I've always had a distant curiosity about it on account of that (and also because Musigny is my favorite vineyard, but in all honesty I almost tend to view this thing more as a curious economic phenomenon than a wine, and I definitely never expected to drink one). As an economic phenomenon, it offers somewhat disappointing marginal utility for its price relative to Musigny from Drouhin and Jadot, perhaps even Mugnier. As a wine, it's probably most like Jadot's, stylistically. It has scents of stone and cement, fruit surfacing on the entry but on the tart side with some of the tautness of stems - really needed some time in the glass to smooth out and loosen up. Then it gets a pop of sweeter fruit, almost a medicinal eldeberry thing, and also some cedary and spiceboxy oak. The tannin seems to build as much as the fruit does, but it's Musigny-level refined as it should be.
RHONE
Pierre Gonon 2017 St.-Joseph (red)
Porcini mushrooms, olives, and cracked pepper. And some very screechy tannin, a bit too edgy for a pleasant drink on day one, but it mellows out a bit on the second day (at which point the barrel of olives executes a hostile takeover of the aroma).
Pierre Gonon 2017 St.-Joseph "Les Oliviers" (white)
Not generally a fan of white Rhones over here, but this hit the spot, moreso than the red in fact. One of those wines for when your mood wants red but your food wants white - i.e., it's white but deep and bassy. Has some of the beeswaxy attributes of chenin with a mineral element that feels more burgundian.
GERMANY
J.J. Christoffel 2006 Urziger Wurzgarten Auslese*
Opens with a faint petrolly scent but the fruit quickly takes over and what beautiful fruit it is. It's intense, luscious, and tropical, but the screwcap has preserved enough zip and energy that it somehow manages to straddle the line between the succulence of a dessert wine and the refreshment value of an ice-cold brew in a beer commercial. So vibrant it glows, and while it ultimately does have a sweetness level not entirely conducive to enjoying this all evening long, if you can't love this for its pure deliciousness, you don't have a pulse.
J.J. Christoffel 2001 Urziger Wurzgarten Auslese*
By pure coincidence Maureen brought this over just a couple days after I'd had the '06. You'd definitely never guess this was the same wine a couple vintages apart. Lime-like fruit here, a little bit creamy, a little bit zesty, still quite vibrant, but much, much less sweet.
Kunstler 2012 Bischofberg Riesling Dry "Old Vines"
Sizzling and in the zone. Electric riesling. "Dry" but not austerely dry. ("Old Vines," too, but not particularly old.) Too guzzlable for more notes than that.
ITALY
Biondi-Santi 1998 Brunello di Montalcino
Definitely ready to go now, tannin basically fully absorbed and the fruit segued to that fully integrated and autumnal, winey state that feels approximately as mature now as a 1970s Bordeaux. So, inclined to figure this is at its peak. Very satisfying and comfortable to drink, though a bit anonymously mature at this point.
Aeris 2014 Etna Bianco Superiore
This was the debut vintage of the Rhys cross-continental carricante project. I liked it last year, now I love it. It's not so different except now it is even more evocatively mineral. Soil-to-glass transfer of a wine, at least if "soil" includes the ocean bed. This would rock any dish with uni or raw shellfish in it.
RIOJA
CVNE 2007 Gran Reserva Imperial
Good lesson never to write off a wine with a track record. When this came out, it was all vanilla, raw wood, and sawdust and I didn't like it at all. Just a few years later, now I really can't discern any trace of the wood and the fruit has really popped, having a sweetness and roundness to it despite having the fully tertiary, leathery of traditional Rioja. Nary a blemish on its polished texture, which means that the tannin is basically invisible too, so it's in a great spot for drinking now and surely for a long while longer.
Ch. Leoville Poyferre 2016
Nothing subtle here. Bordeaux in boldface. Opens with a big blast of cedary aromatics that at first seems to lend it sort of a Pauillac-like personality, but at this level of intensity obviously the barrels are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. While the tannin keeps the wine taut and muscular for the first couple of sips, it doesn't take long before something snaps and it becomes characterized instead by extreme generosity. It's weighty and expansive and a big mouthful of stuff on the palate with the cedar, gravel, and metallic ore swirling around and all cranked up to 11. The focus is on these secondary elements rather than the fruit, or at least they seem to be infusing the fruit rather than being layered on top of it as it all still has a crimson, dried-cherry cast. Despite all this it's not seared with toast to the point of turning into bitter coffee grounds like some of the more extreme Rollandized vintages from 10 or 15 years ago, but it's definitely on the slutty side and with some more time even those initially muscular tannins manage to turn fluffy and plush.
Ch. Leoville Poyferre 1909
Opens with scents of an old basement and some sidewalk-stomped bubblegum. But it tastes, thankfully, better than it smells, and it cleans itself up with about 15 minutes in the glass to find its sea legs. It's extremely light-bodied in material and in literal color - down to watercolor-strength in both departments - but there's nevertheless some spirit left in it that blossoms very fully on the palate notwithstanding the only-barely-corporeal material that's left, and the texture is satisfyingly slick and smooth. The fruit is basically a distant memory - even the patina of old fruit is on the faded side - but there's some nuttiness and forest soil filling in some of the empty spaces.
Ch. Canon 2008
Powerful aromatics - heady, earthy scents fill the air just from pouring it, no swirl-and-sniff necessary. The fruit is still very youthful and I'd never have guessed this was ten years on. It's still rich with a primary sweetness though it finishes with a sharper crunch which is probably the cab franc talking, and those same earthy qualities that were so powerful in the aromas add some intrigue to the fruit with evocations of black truffle, rocks, and freshly turned soil.
Ch. Canon 1953
Much preferred to a recent '55 from the same source - it had a lot more personality to show for all that bottle age under its belt, with more of an emphasis on the tertiary stuff and the cherry fruit as the backdrop. It features generous aromas and corresponding flavor accents of acorns, white truffles, and even a bit of gaminess at the margins. Served before the Burgundy flight but the magnum left plenty to hold in the glass and follow. As is often the case the fruitier Burgundies made the clarets feel a little pale and dry in comparison, but with this one the fruit sweetness actually kept ratcheting up as it sat in the glass till it took on a profile that could almost be passably burgundian itself, helped along by its silky texture.
PICHON AND PICHON
Ch. Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande 2016
Full array of classic PLL aromatics - pitch-black fruit, cedar pencil shavings, walnuts. On the palate it delivers the same, in remarkable procession. First comes the fruit and structure, which is fairly heavy in tannin but in a way that seems to infuse the fruit rather than obscure it, then a wave of cedar, and then a wave of the nutty, more savory elements, and that's before you even swallow the thing. It's a bingo card cliche to say a wine "unfolds in three dimensions" but this one unfolds in four. I am not quite sure I am ready to pick a favorite among the prior three vintages. This is more of a bruiser, nothing like the feminine 2014 and more rugged than the 2015, with which it shares the heavier weight class. It probably has more packed into it than either, but will also probably need more time to get into its zone.
Ch. Pichon Longueville Baron 2016
Epic wine - my WOTV so far - and if you can manage to acquire enough to save some for your kids and grandkids (or great-grandkids, or your own cryogenically frozen head, this ain't cracking up anytime soon), they (or your defrosted future self) will thank you. Interestingly, for many years, the Comtesse was the more classically styled of the Pichons, but for at least the last couple vintages I've found the Baron markedly more old-school, at least if you are measuring that in terms of youthful austerity. This starts out very clenched with a serious bite (not just from tannin), but it isn't closed because it is expressive of a huge array of stuff on both nose and palate, from blackberry to cedar and sandalwood, gravel, and even a savory, succulent element reminiscent of crisp, browned chicken skin. All classic Pauillac, as the Comtesse was, but altogether more muscle-bound than the Comtesse and while both are in very dark tones fruitwise, here it comes across closer to the bleeding edge of ripeness with a nice snap and bite. And yet a couple hours later, it somehow turns cashmere-soft, so if the only thing holding it short of having it all was a shortage of first-growth refinement, somehow it manages to pull that out of its pocket too.
MORE 2016 BORDEAUX
Ch. Lynch Bages 2016
Knockout of a Lynch-Bages from the very first sip. It's packed with aromas of pitch-black fruit, cigar box, and the textbook Pauillac lead-pencil shavings. The fruit on the palate is equally intense with a saturating, tongue-staining density of black fruit with a taut, curranty snap that reminds me of the best aspects of the 2014, which adds a nice counterpoint to its rich, saucy concentration. The structure clenches up a little bit with time and the tannins turn edgier and more abrupt, but the sheer richness of the fruit ought to give this a pretty nice window of pretty thrilling drinking before it closes down.
Ch. Grand Puy Lacoste 2016
Expressive right away with scents of pencil fillings and gravel. It's deceptively easy-drinking, smooth and supple but infused with plenty of tannin. It's also infused with a cigarette smokiness so evocative that it starts feeling like a wine you'd drink in some seedy bar in a film noir while a neon "no vacancy" sign flickers overhead till you catch the eye of a dame in a long dress who spells nothing but trouble. Except that it's not entirely in B&W film stock because it does have a very fresh and pure impression of mildly zingy currant and raspberry behind that smoky gauze.
Ch. Leoville Las Cases 2016
Confounding this chateau's reputation for producing blockbuster wines, this is by far the most feminine and streamlined 2016 I've had so far, with a silky texture and slender figure more akin to elite Pomerols like Trotanoy or VCC than a left bank vin de garde - though it does approach the exquisitely elegant fashion the 1990 is displaying lately. It's also quite restrained relative to most from the vintage and particularly its nearby competition. If the Pichon-Baron is grabbing the microphone and screaming, "y'all ready to rock and roll?!" this wine is more like Morrissey. Swirling the glass coaxes out scents of cedar shavings, leading to a dark-toned but still red-fruited palate infused with just about the maximum amount of tannin a wine can possibly have and still retain a refined texture - it's as if someone had stirred in concrete powder and we got the chance to catch this just before it seizes up.
Ch. Leoville-Barton 2016
Had to give this another shot as my first bottle a few months ago was solid but I expected more out of Barton this vintage. It has definitely improved and put on some more richness with a few months to settle, though the general personality is similar with its bright, red-fruited profile, crunchy and crystalline - juicier and much brighter in tone than Barton's typical profile. Beyond that it's lightly cedary and heavily rocky and mineral, but the fruit is altogether more saturating which is nice because I had been surprised this wasn't more stuffed. Three days later it became Spectator's Wine of the Year, which I was thankful for because it didn't drive up the price of anything I hadn't bought yet, but this is pretty far from a WOTY for me and actually somewhat of a disappointment for the chateau.
Ch. Durfort-Vivens 2016
Dizzyingly complex aromas of botanicals, bramble, and a succulent, savory roastiness. There's a succulence to the fruit, too, which comes across acute and piercing in a redder, more cassis-like complexion than most of the northern Medoc properties are showing this vintage, but similarly rich and concentrated with a kiss of seared oakspice, and veering towards the black-cherry side with air. Structurally, this has been for the last few years, and continues to be, one of the more old-fashioned Bordeaux out there, but it feels a bit weird to use that term in reference to an estate doing the hip biodynamie thing. In any event, while it has a tight, clenched grip, there's enough saturation and sweetness to the fruit that it doesn't go so far as feeling austere, and the grip relaxes enough on day two to highlight the primary fruit character more. Bottom line is that this is packed with gorgeous material, built to last, and comes from a property with some serious pedigree (yes, Virginia, this is a second growth!) making its best wine in generations - which the price tag still hasn't caught up to.
Ch. Malescot-St.-Exupery 2016
This is so intensely and immediately mineral it practically turns your wine-glass into a fracking instrument and requires a hardhat. It buries you under so many layers of pulverized rock, metal shavings, and pencil fillings that it's hard to call this anything other than fruit-backward, or whatever the opposite of fruit-forward is - the fruit profile is basically the opposite of the slutty 2015, which was gushing with inky sweetness. Here, the flesh of the fruit has to be fairly well-hidden, but obviously it's in there somewhere because for all its structure and stoniness it doesn't feel too dry or austere. Still, the fruit is mostly felt in terms of precision and some refreshment at the edges and I'm hard-pressed to find any primary fruit flavors that correlate to the usual Bordeaux TN fruit salad; the dominant flavors here are from the mineral and earth, and there's such a wide spectrum of them I have to give this the edge over the 2015, but the two together have to be one of the best examples I've seen in wines from a single estate (in back-to-back vintages no less) offering a perfect compare-and-contrast between the hedonistic style and the intellectual one. Under Diam cork - thank you!
Ch. Les Carmes Haut-Brion 2016
Very fine and silky in texture. It shows you how much things have changed that a wine built like this is getting blockbuster points from the point purveyors. The fruit is restrained too, and definitely not blockbustery, although it is clipped somewhat by some reediness and very raw-tasting wood. The press doesn't seem to agree on the new oak specs; Decanter reports 80%, TWA 65% - both numbers would seem to deliver enough new wood to defeat the purpose of the small portion aged in amphorae, but usually new oak in Bordeaux makes it toasty, cedary, smoky, sweet, or whatever, and here it just feels like straight wood. On the second day the fruit had sweetened up a little bit but the wood component didn't diminish. It wasn't so aggressive that I'd be worried about it taking over in the cellar, but it was annoying enough to make this less fun than it should have been to check in now, however impressive that texture was. This could turn out very nice but it's getting a lot of hype lately and it's not living up to that.
BURGUNDY
Lucien Boillot 2016 Nuits-St.-Georges Les Pruliers
Centenarian vines. Dark cherry fruit has a saturation relative to many from the vintage that shows off that old-vine strength but also has a bit of a bitter edge. Intense stony earth is almost as intense. Pretty much a textbook showing for this bottling.
Duroche 2016 Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaut St. Jacques
Not-quite-centenarian vines, but getting pretty close to it. Drank with the Boillot (and the Jadot, below). Beautifully pure fruit here, rounder and sweeter than the Boillot and closer to pure red cherry in tone - very friendly, easy to like, and velvety. Might have taken this for a 2015, but for...
Louis Jadot 2015 Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaux St. Jacques
Close call but probably my favorite of the three because the fruit was nearly as pretty as the Duroche and the earthy qualities nearly as expressive as the Boillot. Some candied sweetness reverberates on the back end which is that 2015 ripeness poking through.
Jean Grivot 2016 Vosne-Romanee Les Chaumes
Vibrant and crunchy red-berry fruit profile here, a little bit gamay-like in its pure primary freshness and more than a little bit reminiscent of some of the pinots from Rhys that also share that quality. Seasoned with a bit of aromatic cedar, but the fruit is in the foreground. Very easy-drinking both for the producer and the vintage, at least as far as the texture and gentle structure goes, but kind of shy in terms of Vosne personality, which this site can do very well when it's on.
Bruno Clair 2015 Savigny-les-Baune La Dominode
More centenarian vines. Probably the best Clair Dominode I've ever had (and hey, these old vines are now older than they've ever been!). The color is halfway between red and rose, more of a pale rouge, yet it's absolutely packed with material in a way that comes across layered and robust while being essentially lightweight. First comes a puff of perfumed fruit mixing rose petals and a spirity essence of pale cherries, then it solidifies and a robust, stony minerality takes over. From ethereal on the entry to chiseled on the back end, there's not even a molecule of baby fat but it still has a youthful freshness and gloss.
Georges Roumier 2012 Musigny
The wine that disproves the Coase Theorem. I've always had a distant curiosity about it on account of that (and also because Musigny is my favorite vineyard, but in all honesty I almost tend to view this thing more as a curious economic phenomenon than a wine, and I definitely never expected to drink one). As an economic phenomenon, it offers somewhat disappointing marginal utility for its price relative to Musigny from Drouhin and Jadot, perhaps even Mugnier. As a wine, it's probably most like Jadot's, stylistically. It has scents of stone and cement, fruit surfacing on the entry but on the tart side with some of the tautness of stems - really needed some time in the glass to smooth out and loosen up. Then it gets a pop of sweeter fruit, almost a medicinal eldeberry thing, and also some cedary and spiceboxy oak. The tannin seems to build as much as the fruit does, but it's Musigny-level refined as it should be.
RHONE
Pierre Gonon 2017 St.-Joseph (red)
Porcini mushrooms, olives, and cracked pepper. And some very screechy tannin, a bit too edgy for a pleasant drink on day one, but it mellows out a bit on the second day (at which point the barrel of olives executes a hostile takeover of the aroma).
Pierre Gonon 2017 St.-Joseph "Les Oliviers" (white)
Not generally a fan of white Rhones over here, but this hit the spot, moreso than the red in fact. One of those wines for when your mood wants red but your food wants white - i.e., it's white but deep and bassy. Has some of the beeswaxy attributes of chenin with a mineral element that feels more burgundian.
GERMANY
J.J. Christoffel 2006 Urziger Wurzgarten Auslese*
Opens with a faint petrolly scent but the fruit quickly takes over and what beautiful fruit it is. It's intense, luscious, and tropical, but the screwcap has preserved enough zip and energy that it somehow manages to straddle the line between the succulence of a dessert wine and the refreshment value of an ice-cold brew in a beer commercial. So vibrant it glows, and while it ultimately does have a sweetness level not entirely conducive to enjoying this all evening long, if you can't love this for its pure deliciousness, you don't have a pulse.
J.J. Christoffel 2001 Urziger Wurzgarten Auslese*
By pure coincidence Maureen brought this over just a couple days after I'd had the '06. You'd definitely never guess this was the same wine a couple vintages apart. Lime-like fruit here, a little bit creamy, a little bit zesty, still quite vibrant, but much, much less sweet.
Kunstler 2012 Bischofberg Riesling Dry "Old Vines"
Sizzling and in the zone. Electric riesling. "Dry" but not austerely dry. ("Old Vines," too, but not particularly old.) Too guzzlable for more notes than that.
ITALY
Biondi-Santi 1998 Brunello di Montalcino
Definitely ready to go now, tannin basically fully absorbed and the fruit segued to that fully integrated and autumnal, winey state that feels approximately as mature now as a 1970s Bordeaux. So, inclined to figure this is at its peak. Very satisfying and comfortable to drink, though a bit anonymously mature at this point.
Aeris 2014 Etna Bianco Superiore
This was the debut vintage of the Rhys cross-continental carricante project. I liked it last year, now I love it. It's not so different except now it is even more evocatively mineral. Soil-to-glass transfer of a wine, at least if "soil" includes the ocean bed. This would rock any dish with uni or raw shellfish in it.
RIOJA
CVNE 2007 Gran Reserva Imperial
Good lesson never to write off a wine with a track record. When this came out, it was all vanilla, raw wood, and sawdust and I didn't like it at all. Just a few years later, now I really can't discern any trace of the wood and the fruit has really popped, having a sweetness and roundness to it despite having the fully tertiary, leathery of traditional Rioja. Nary a blemish on its polished texture, which means that the tannin is basically invisible too, so it's in a great spot for drinking now and surely for a long while longer.