I tasted these 12 Chateauneufs at Villa Due restaurant in Kanda where a friend, Daiko Ito, organises a tasting dinner of rare, old wines, pretty much every single Monday night and has done so for 11 years. This was the 579th edition! Quite incredible and awesome! So that’s where the Mont-Redon turned up, and here are my notes on the others.
After the splendours of the Clos Vougeot, we went on to the Chambolle tasting for Chambolle and Morey, principally…
After a pretty relaxing night at my cottage in St Romain, one of the few really pretty and warm-feeling villages in Burgundy, Day 2 was fabulous. We started in the Clos de Vougeot itself and here’s what I liked (or didn’t). With so many fabulous wines to taste, I tried to note just the overall style (and it’s just my taste…) and potential reward of the wines. And “fruit” doesn’t mean oranges and apples, but a spectrum of properly ripe Pinot Noir aromas… All the wines were from the 2010 vintage, unless mentioned. And what a vintage…
The Grands Jours de Bourgogne is a bi-annual event for professionals to taste new vintages in Burgundy. I like to go every 4 years just to stay in touch with what’s happening in Burgundy, taste some great wines, remind myself why we don’t sell Burgundy and generally check out a different region.
Last night, we had a home party to welcome a new staff member and because I’d come back from France last week with some tasty – and ridiculously cheap – food bought in Beaumes-de-Venise at my favourite butcher. Beaumes-de-Venise, population around 4,000 (and serving another, perhaps, 25,000 in the region), benefits from no fewer than 3 boulangeries; 1 superb boucherie, which has recently changed hands but is maintaining impeccable standards; 1 excellent little supermarket with a fine range of local and organic fruit and vegetables; and numerous other shops including an olive oil mill. There’s a typically Provençal market on tuesdays with a couple of dozen stalls to supplement this range of fresh foods, with cheeses and fish and more options on herbs, spices etc. It is a little food paradise – if you’re into French food, that is! – with top quality and fair prices.
Updating our website notes on this extraordinary producer got me quite excited about his outstanding record and contribution to the wine world. His wines are fabulously food-friendly, basically dry and are the sort of wines to change people’s view of both Riesling and German wine. I often think it is the white equivalent of Rhône red. In 2005, the top French critics Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve gave Heymann-Löwenstein their prize, a kind of wine Oscar, for best foreign wine – against competition including Vega Sicilia and Ridge Montebello. Other winners of the year included Chateau Latour and Yquem. It may be the Oscars but it still goes to underline the sublime quality of his wine.
The Wine Spectator’s James Molesworth does a fascinating retrospective tasting of Chateauneuf 2001 in November this year. It’s striking how well Bois de Boursan performs for the price. We drank this wine at lunch with Jean-Paul Versino in September and it is indeed a wonderfully elegant, balanced and deeply satisfying wine, nothing to do with the heavy, powerful, sweet wine of popular imagination…
At Restaurant Legato in Shibuya, 12 people, 12 wines. The theme was wines you need to drink in December, meaning some of my favourite wines for a party. It was a varied collection and worked well due to the variety. So here’s what we drank, with a few notes. As usual I served the wines in 3 flights of 4 wines, each accompanied by a tasty dish prepared by Legato.
3/5 of our Australian producers, all based in Victoria, coordinated well to all get here for 4 days at the same time last week. Phil Moraghan of Curly Flat set the ball rolling by booking in a visit on his way to France for 3 months to work a vintage at De Montille in Burgundy. Fred Pizzini and his wife Katrina had been wanting to visit for a while. It remained only to entice John Nagorcka from Hochkirch to venture out of his large and demanding mixed biodynamic farm in deepest South-West Victoria.
