Tag Archives: Morey-St-Denis

60 Second Wine Review — Domaine Coquard Loison Fleurot Chambolle-Musigny

Amber LeBeau in 60 Second Reviews, Burgundy, Wine reviews

Published on February 28, 2018

A few quick thoughts on the 2013 Domaine Coquard-Loison-Fleurot Chambolle-Musigny.

The Geekery

Domaine Coquard-Loison-Fleurot (CLF) is a 5th generation family estate currently ran by cousins Claire Fleurot and Thomas Colladot. For years, the fruit from their enviable holdings in the Grand Crus of Grands Echezeaux (0.18 ha), Echezeaux (1.29 ha), Clos de Vougeot (0.64 ha), Clos de la Roche (1.17 ha), Clos St. Denis (0.17 ha) and Charmes-Chambertain (0.32 ha) went to négociants. But since 2010, when Thomas took over winemaking, they have been domaine bottling over 90% of their production.

Recently, Neal Martin of the The Wine Advocate has described CLF as “…your new favorite domaine” that has flown under the radar for many years but likely won’t for long.

The Chambolle-Musigny comes from 0.8 ha of vines located just below the premier crus. In The Wines of Burgundy, Clive Coates notes the high quality of village-level wines in Chambolle-Musigny is partly attributed to their being so little of it. The high portion of limestone and low fertility means that Chambolle-Musigny always produces far less wine than neighboring communes like Morey-St-Denis and Vosne-Romanée.

The Combe de Chamboeuf between the Grand Crus of Bonnes Mares and Musigny often deliver hailstorms. In many vintages, this further reduces yields. But while 2013 saw hail devastate the Côte de Beaune, Chambolle-Musigny was relatively untouched that vintage.

The Wine

Medium-plus intensity nose. Very floral but it also has an exotic black olive and Asian spice note that is very intriguing.

The black plums are well balanced by the fresh acidity in this wine.

On the palate, dark fruits emerge like black plum and black cherry. The medium-plus acidity balances the fruit well. The medium tannins have a soft, silkiness to them. Lovely and long finish.

The Verdict

At around $75-85, this is a screaming bargain compared to the village level 2013 Chambolle-Musigny wines from estates like Comte de Vogue (ave $164), Mugnier (ave $142) and Roumier (ave $178).

While Coquard-Loison-Fleurot hasn’t achieved the level of acclaim as those estates, it may be worth taking Neal Martin’s advice and discovering this domain before everyone else catches on.

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Getting Geeky with Cave de Genouilly Aligote

Amber LeBeau in Burgundy, Wine grapes, Wine Knowledge

Published on January 20, 2018

Going to need more than 60 seconds to geek out about the 2015 Cave de Genouilly Bourgogne Aligoté.

The Background

Cave de Genouilly was founded in 1932 as a co-operative of family growers in the Côte Chalonnaise region of southern Burgundy. Today, the co-op includes 90 growers with 180 acres based around the communes of Genouilly, Fley, Bissy-sur-Fley, Saint-Martin-du-Tartre and Saint-Clément-sur-Guye. Many of the growers are second and third generation members of the co-op.

In addition to Bourgogne Aligoté, the co-op also produces Crémant de Bourgogne as well as still wines from the AOCs of Rully, Givry and Montagny–including some premier cru.

The Grape

According to Jancis Robinson’s Wine Grapes, Aligoté is an offspring of Pinot and Gouais blanc, making it a full sibling of Chardonnay, Melon de Bourgogne, Gamay and Auxerrois.

Robinson speculates that the name Aligoté is derived from the old synonym for Gouais blanc, Gôt. The grape first appeared in written records in 1780 under the synonym ‘Plant de Trois’ which refers to the tendency of Aligoté to produce three clusters per branch. The name Aligoté, itself, appears in the Côte d’Or for the first time in 1807.

The grape earned some notoriety after World War II when the mayor of Dijon, Félix Kir, created a cocktail that blended Aligoté with Crème de Cassis. Today that cocktail is known as the Kir and, while it has many derivatives, the classic incarnation still features Aligoté.

The classic Kir cocktail of Aligoté with Crème de Cassis paired with gougères, a savory puff pastry made with cheese.

Today there is around 4800 acres of the variety planted in France–virtually all in Burgundy. Producers tend to plant Aligoté either at the very bottom or very top of the slope, leaving the prime mid-slope section for the more profitable Chardonnay and Pinot noir.

While most plantings are found in the Côte Chalonnaise, particularly in the Bouzeron AOC, the grape was permitted in Meursault throughout the 19th century and is technically still authorized for use in the Grand Cru of Corton-Charlemagne thanks to a 1930s legal judgement. Bonneau du Matray maintained 1 ha of Aligoté in the Grand Cru until the mid-1970s.

In my post Brave New Burgs, I noted that the list of Burgundian producers who seem to have a soft spot for this obscure variety is impressive. Aubert de Villaine (of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti fame), Lalou Bize-Leroy, Marquis d’Angerville and Michel Lafarge, to name a few. Aligoté is even planted in the prime real estate of the Morey-St-Denis Premier Cru Clos des Monts Luisants owned by Domaine Ponsot.

Outside of France, Aligoté can be found in Switzerland (≈ 50 acres) and several eastern European countries such as Bulgaria (≈ 2700 acres), Moldova (≈ 39,000 acres), Romania (≈ 18,000 acres), Russia (≈ 1,000 acres) and Ukarine where the grape accounts for 11% of total vineyard area with ≈ 24,000 acres.

By Ensenator - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, released on Wikimedia commons

Aligoté grapes growing in Romania.

In the US, California winemaker Jed Steele makes an example in Washington State called Shooting Star sourced from 2 acres of Aligoté planted in the Yakima Valley by the Newhouse family in the 1970s. Josh Jensen of Calera has also experimented with the variety in the high-altitude Mt. Harlan AVA in the Gabilan Mountains of San Benito County, California.

The Wine

Medium plus intensity nose with citrus and fresh cut white flowers. A little grassy. Makes me think of a Sauvignon blanc.

The mouthfeel has surprising weight with a medium plus body that helps balance the medium plus acidity. It rounds it out and keeps the wine mouthwatering rather than bitey. Apple flavors appear alongside the citrus (lemon) and fresh floral notes carrying through from the bouquet. The grassiness doesn’t, though, which has my thoughts shifting from comparing it to a Sauvignon blanc to something closer to an unoaked Chardonnay from the Macon-Village.

The Verdict

In Brave New Burgs, I summed up my tasting note on the 2015 Cave de Genouilly Bourgogne Aligoté “As if a Sauvignon blanc and an unoaked Chardonnay had a baby. Great mouthfeel with weight. Smooth but fresh.”

The wine has a lot of character that makes it enjoyable on its own but with its mouthwatering acidity, I thinks it place to shine is with food. At around $15-18, its combination of fruit, acidity and structure gives great flexibility on the table letting it pair with anything from white and shellfish to fatty tuna and salmon as well as vegetarian fare, poultry and pork.

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Geeking out with Taupenot-Merme Gevrey-Chambertin Bel Air

Amber LeBeau in Burgundy, Wine reviews

Published on January 15, 2018

Going to need more than 60 seconds to geek out over the 2009 Domaine Taupenot-Merme Gevrey-Chambertin Premier Cru Bel Air.

The Background

Domaine Taupenot-Merme is a 7th generation family estate based in Morey St.-Denis ran by siblings Romain and Virginie. The estate covers 32 acres in both the Côtes de Nuits and Côtes de Beaune including plots in the Grand Cru vineyards of Charmes-Chambertin, Mazoyères-Chambertin (Taupenot-Merme being one of the few estates to bottle these Grand Crus separately), Clos de Lambrays (the only other estate outside of the eponymous clos to own a piece of this Morey-St-Denis Grand Cru) and Corton in the Le Rognet climat.

According to Bruce Sanderson of Wine Spectator, until 1988 the estate did all their vine propagation and rootstock grafting in house, carefully selecting massale clones from their best vines. Since 2001, all the vineyards have been farmed organically.

For winemaking, the grapes get around 10 days cold soaking before fermentation with the estate using wild, indigenous cultures for both primary and malolactic fermentation. Fermentation is done in stainless steel with a mixture of punch downs and pump overs before the wines are transferred to barrel where they see 12-15 months aging before spending their last 3 months in tank prior to bottling. The amount of new oak each wine receives varies, ranging from 25% for village level to 40% for Grand Crus. Premier Cru wines, like the Gevrey-Chambertin Bel Air, usually see about 30% new oak. The wines are bottled without any fining or filtering.

The Vineyard

https://www.winescholarguild.org/programs/bourgogne-master-level-program/bourgogne-master-level-program.html

The Premier Cru vineyard of Bel Air surrounded by the Grand Crus of Gevrey Chambertain.
The pink line highlights the up-slope part of the vineyard that is village level.
Photo taken from screenshot of The Wine Scholar Guild’s Master Burgundy Course.

The Bel Air vineyard is located in an enviable position up-slope of the esteemed Grand Cru Chambertin-Clos de Bèze with 6.6 acres classified as Premier Cru.

The high altitude vines and rocky, oolithic limestone-rich soils tend to do particularly well in warm vintages (like 2009) where it can maintain fresh acidity. The vines are at the same altitude as much of the Grand Cru of Ruchottes-Chambertain and parts of Latricières-Chambertin but Bel Air is much more heavily shaded by forests and sits on a steeper slope which impacts the amount of direct sunlight the vines receive. Though the most heavily shaded plots are not permitted to Premier Cru classification but rather village level Gevrey-Chambertin.

As with a lot of Burgundy, it is hard to know exactly how many growers own pieces of a particular vineyard. Matt Kramer’s 1990 book Making Sense of Burgundy, list 11 owners with the family of Jean-Claude Boisset owning the largest segments with 1.5 acres. Domaine Taupenot-Merme’s 0.9 acre holdings in the Premier Cru were mostly planted in 1973 and produce around 205 cases of wine.

On WineSearcher.com, you can find several offerings of Bel Air Gevrey-Chambertin from producers like Domaine de la Vougeraie (ave price $73), Philippe Pacalet (ave price $123) and Domaine Philippe Charlopin-Parizot (ave price $79).

The Wine

Photo by Nissy-KITAQ. Released on Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0

The floral earthy component of this wines makes you feel like you are walking through a botanical forest.

Medium intensity with pop and pour. A mix of red and dark fruits with a tinge of sweet baking spices like cinnamon and allspice. Tossed in a decanter and after an hour, WOW! The aromatics jack it up to high intensity with the fruit becoming more defined as a mix of dark plums and red cherries. The spice is also more pronounced and is joined with a floral earthy component, like walking through a botanical forest.

On the palate there is silkiness to the mouthfeel with the ripe tannins but medium-plus acidity keeps it feeling very fresh. The fruit carries through but the spice notes get a little more quiet as the floral earthy notes come to the forefront and linger for a very long finish.

The Verdict

This is a wine with a lot of layers and while it was drinking gorgeously, I can’t help but feel like I opened it up too young. It probably has the legs to keep on developing for another 5-7 years easily.

The wine is averaging around $108 on WineSearcher.com but I was able to pick it up at a local wine shop for $90. That is a screaming deal for how scrumptious this Burg is drinking and I’m sincerely regretting not buying more. Even at $108, it is a very compelling bottle and one of those wines that screams “Yes, this is what high quality Burgundy is about!”

If you can find this bottle, nab it.

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Brave New Burgs (Part 1)

Amber LeBeau in Burgundy, Wine grapes, Wine Knowledge

Published on November 6, 2017

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Pop quiz, wine geeks.

1.) What is the white grape of Burgundy?

If you know enough to be dangerous with a restaurant wine list or in a wine shop, then you probably didn’t hesitate to answer “Chardonnay”.

And for the most part, you’d be right.

But also a little wrong.

Some of the best “intro to wine” texts around like Karen MacNeil’s The Wine Bible, Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World Wine Course and Madeline Puckette’s Wine Folly will teach you that it is easy to start getting a grasp of Burgundy.

Just remember that there is only two grapes–Pinot noir and Chardonnay.

It’s a reflex condition to think with Burgundy that if its red, it’s Pinot noir. If it’s white, then Chardonnay. Sure, everything else about Burgundy with it’s 100 appellations and intricate classification system of 23 regional AOCs, 44 villages, 33 Grand Crus, 585 Premier Crus and countless named lieu dits is enough to make your head spin—but it’s easy to nail the grape varieties. Right?

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

A Sauvignon blanc produced less than 20 km from the heart of Chablis’ Grand Cru

I started working on the Wine Scholar Guild‘s Bourgogne Master Level Program lead by Don Kinnan with the desire to get more comfortable with Burgundy. But it wasn’t long before I found myself diving head-first into a rabbit hole that would shake me out of my comfort zone but introduce me to a world far more exciting than the one I began studying.

As Allen Meadows, the Burghound, is fond of saying–Burgundy is “the land of exceptions”.

It wasn’t long before the first exceptions started blowing in like the north wind across the Yonne. Here, in the land of Chablis, we have the Auxerrois where grapes like Sauvignon blanc run wild in Saint-Bris and Melon de Bourgogne (the grape of Muscadet) in Vézelay.

However, the exceptions aren’t limited to obscure villages in the northern backwoods of Burgundy. Instead, in the heart of the Côte-d’Or we have the curious case of Pinot Gouges.

In the 1930s, Henri Gouges was inspecting his vineyards in the Nuits-St-Georges premier cru monopole of Clos des Porrets. He noticed that one of his red Pinot noir vines was producing white grape clusters. Intrigued, Gourge took cuttings from the vine and planted them in the NSG premier cru vineyard of La Perrières. His grandchildren still cultivate this “Pinot blanc” though instead of labeling it as that grape, the Gouges family describe Pinot Gouges as “Pinot noir that lost their color“. Regardless of what the vines are called–the fact still remains that in the middle of Chardonnay land, we have an exciting and distinctively non-Chardonnay white Burgundy being produced from a premier cru vineyard.

My notes on the Pinot Gouges “The color looks like a regular white Burg with some oak influence. On the nose, tree fruits of apples and pears but there is a lot of spice here–not oak spice but rather exotic spices.
On the palate there is a lot of weight and texture–things that would make me think of oak except for the complete absence of oak flavors. There is no vanilla, cinnamon, clove, allspice, etc.”

Now while it is technically illegal to plant Pinot blanc in most of the Côte d’Or (though, again, there are exceptions), several producers still tend to legacy vines. Inspired by bottles of Pinot blanc from the 1960s that aged remarkably well, Domaine Méo-Camuzet sourced Pinot blanc vines from Alsace to plant in their Clos St Philibert vineyard in Flagey-Echézeaux. The wine produced from these vines is blended with Chardonnay and classified under Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits AOC (as opposed to a village level Vosne-Romanée).

Then there is the case of Pinot Beurot (Pinot gris), the sneaky pink-skinned mutation of Pinot noir that can sometimes find itself interspersed among Pinot noir vines. Not content to just be an interloper, the grape plays a starring role in wines like Domaine Comte Senard Aloxe-Corton blanc that is 100% Pinot Beurot as well Domaine Lucien Boillot et Fils Les Grands Poisots sourced from a parcel of Pinot Beurot first planted in the Volnay vineyard in 1958. Not legally permitted to be called a Volnay, the wine is labeled under the basic regional Bourgogne appellation. Likewise, in the famed white wine vineyards of Puligny-Montrachet, Domaine Guillemard-Clerc has a little less than an acre of Pinot Beurot which goes into it regional Bourgogne blanc. In the Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Beaune AOC, Domaine Guillemard-Pothier à Meloisey also produces a Pinot Beurot.

My notes on the Cave de Genouilly Aligote “As if a Sauvignon blanc and an unoaked Chardonnay had a baby. Great mouthfeel with weight. Smooth but fresh.”

And this is not even getting into the more widely known exception of Aligoté which has its own AOC and has earned the affection of a literal “Who’s Who” of legendary Burgundy producers like Aubert de Villaine, Lalou Bize-Leroy, Marquis d’Angerville and Michel Lafarge. Domaine Ponsot takes the love affair a step further to make premier cru level Aligoté in the Morey-St-Denis monopole of Clos des Monts Luisants.

The faith in these producers to devote precious terroir to this obscure grape is a testament that there is something interesting about Aligoté that makes it stand out in the Chardonnay-saturated world of Burgundy. It’s high acidity enchants with racy and mouthwatering appeal that is balanced by a weighty mid-palate that gives a sense of lemon custard richness which can charm even the most traditional white Burgundy lover.

There is no doubt that Burgundy is home to some of the greatest expressions of Chardonnay. However, for the wine geeks conditioned to merely think White Burgundy=Chardonnay, there is brave new world of exciting white Burgs waiting to be discovered.