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The pictures above show Mary at the Domaine des Roches Bleues in the Côte de Brouilly us with our friend Ali Benyahya (and one of his wonderful paintings) at a Twinning meal in Châtillon-en-Diois, and on a visit to Domaine Maby in Tavel/Lirac. |
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On all our visits to France (and wherever else wine is produced) we spend some time visiting local producers and sampling their latest vintages. This page catalogues some of our experiences. December 07 March-July 07 February 07 January 07 December 06 November 06 October 06 May 06 June 2009 - Didier Cornillon, Saint Roman, Drôme We've known the vigneron Didier Cornillon in Saint Roman (in our old twinning area of the Diois) for over 15 years and are always pleased to rediscover his wines, including those from Tunisia (with tastes of spices and hotter soils) as well as from the Diois including of course the sparkling Crémant and Clairette de Die. We enjoyed the Tunisian red and rosé with various meals during our week nearby, and brought back some of the excellent Gamay d'Antan which is one of his appellation controlée (Châtillon en Diois) wines. Most recently he has started to make red St Joseph from a small parcel of vines he has acquired on the other side of the Rhône. We'll be fascinated to compare this wine with the St Joseph we acquired earlier this year at Saint Désirat (see below) on the one hand, and with his own 100% syrah called Saint Romanée which he grows right here near Châtillon on the other. January 2009 - the Cave de Saint Désirat We first visited the Cave de Saint Désirat in the summer of 2005 - I know when because it was early in our wine explorations in France, but they told us they only moved to the current site in 2004, so it must have been just after that. It's on the west bank of the Rhône south of the village of Condrieu, and it's the delicious if expensive white wine of the same name which is one of the main attractions. Condrieu is a small appellation controlée and the first to make famous the difficult but very perfumed white grape viognier which has since become ubiquitous across the south of France and across the world. But as Chablis is to chardonnay, so Condrieu is to viognier. There are lots of fruity, flowery examples from elsewhere (Mary described one of the first we bought, from St Estève d'Uchaud in the southern Rhône, as tasting like dolly mixture - it made her laugh), but the original AOC is an altogether more elegant and refined wine. Not, at the price, one for everyday, but a beautiful apéritif for a special occasion or (as the French always have it) accompaniment to foie gras. But the main business of this cave co-opérative is the production of another AOC, Saint Joseph, one of several in the northern Rhône (others include Hermitage, Cornas and Crozes Hermitage) made from 100% syrah. The impressive array of 2005 and 2006 wines on offer at the moment come from 2 quite exceptional years in the Rhône as in most of France. All were deep-coloured and deep-flavoured - the less expensive ready to drink soon, but the better-made, with old and new oak adding to their complexity without 'woodiness', capable of being kept for some years. Incidentally, the historical proximity of the viognier and syrah cépages on this bit of the west bank of the Rhône has led to a curious mixture in one of the great wines of the area, Côte Rôtie. This appellation, as small as Condrieu, is at face value another deep red syrah, but unlike its northern Rhône neighbours the wines have a small amount of viognier added to give a wonderful exotic lift to the smell and taste of the wines. In recent years lookalikes from Australia and South Africa have made this rare combination of grape varieties better known. We decided to invite members of the Réseau d'Echanges to a tasting of the Italian wines we'd brought back this year and last. We chose a Friday lunchtime, 12 people signed up, and we asked everyone to bring something to share for the meal, trying to match each of the 6 wines we had chosen with a dish. The list of wines is here if you're interested - all single grape varieties from Friuli, and almost all little-known outside the area. At the outset I should say that all six wines were excellent, and each went well with its accompanying food. For the apéritif we had the sweet but refreshing and slightly tannic white verduzzo friuliano, then a fresh and lemony tocai friuliano with a light tuna and vegetable bake from one of our guests as the first entrée. The first of the reds, the tazzelenghe went with magnificent platters of charcuterie provided by another of our guests - the wine is quite astringent at first taste, but as in the tasting we found the aftertaste wonderful and well-matched with the meats. Mary had made the main course, a richly-flavoured rabbit casserole from Elizabeth David's Italian food with the second red, a schioppetino which had a delicious taste of sour cherries. Another guest had brought the cheese, including two or three Italian ones, with which we drank a refined and powerful refosco and then the sweet, one of the elegant fruit tarts you can buy at almost any bakers', went with the dessert wine, a Ramondolo which is made from the same grape as the apéritif but is richer and more concentrated because the grapes are dried before the juice is extracted. In fact, we learned in Italy that the tazzelenghe is also made with grapes left to dry for a month after picking - this is a common Italian practice for some of the great concentrated reds from other areas, but it was a surprise to find it used with a wine from such an obscure grape variety. The results, however, justify the effort we think: when we tried the rest of a bottle the day after the tasting it tasted even better. People who came to the tasting asked for details of the producers. I have mentioned them in the April entry (below) where you can find a link to the Anna Berra website from which the last two wines came from. The first 4 were from the Iacuzzi brothers in Torreano, who I now discover also have a website (though in Italian). As far as I know neither exports to France, and I don't know when we shall next go to Friuli, so it may be difficult to get hold of the wines, but you never know...
2 April - I have just returned from a morning visit to Châteauneuf du Pape, where our friend Daniel's brother makes wine. We'd been looking forward to this for some time but in the end Mary couldn't come so it was a men's outing. It's only an hour's drive, and we were there by 10 to find the bottling lorry hard at work - or rather waiting, because the corks had not arrived. Luckily they turned up soon after. Despite our visits around the Rhône Valley over many years we'd never visited Châteauneuf du Pape, commonly accepted as the best wine village in the southern Rhône, with prices that much higher to match. Most of the wine Daniel's brother makes is sold to someone else who bottles and markets it - until last year it was Jaboulet, one of the biggest names in the area, which is an indication of the high quality of these wines. Apparently this year they are selling to another company for the American market. But each year, he blends and bottles 3,000 bottles under his own label, and this was the day for bottling the 2006, mostly vinified in huge old oak cuves (barrels at least 3 metres high - glimpsed in the Maby picture at the top of the page) but including a small percentage of wine matured in new oak barrels (also to be seen in the Maby photo). The blending (as in many wineries) is done on the advice of an oenologist, who recommends the proportions of the different grape varieties (mainly syrah but including several others - grenache, cinsault and so on) and the proportion to be blended in from the new barrels, which impart more tannin and an 'oaky' taste which is often characterised as vanilla. We tasted the 2007, still in its early stages of being blended, the 2006 which was being bottled that day, and from bottles the 2005 and 2003. While all but the 03 are still young, the quality and complexity were very clear and the wines had a rich and savoury consistency which seemed to me to justify the high status of the appellation. I learned lots on the trip - sniffing (as you do before actually tasting) from different parts of the top of the glass, front, middle and back and comparing the intensity of the aroma can indicate whether a wine is still too young, or ready, or too old - I thought I could sense the difference but I'm not sure if my nose is reliable enough to use it! And the boundary of the appellation was defined, for the first time in France, by observing local flora - where certain species grew, the land was outside the limit of the area for Châteauneuf du Pape. This obviously relates to precise soil conditions and the magical terroir which defines so much among the complex array of wines produced across France. Last Friday (8 Feb) we set out with friends for the Rhône Valley. This was really where our wine explorations began in the early 1990s, and since 2000 we have scarcely set foot in the eastern Rhône Valley, with evocative villages like Beaumes de Venise, Vacqueyras, Gigondas, and Cairanne where we headed this time. Our first call was to the Domaine Rouge Bleu, just established near Sainte Cécile les Vignes by the charming and obviously gifted Jean Marc Espinasse. We have visited new wine makers before as you will know if you have read further down this page, but this was the first time I had met someone still waiting to bottle his first vintage. It was well worth the visit - he talked about his decision to go into wine making after working as an accountant, following his uncle in returning to family wine making in the area (the uncle's vines are in Châteauneuf du Pape and a must I think for a future visit). He and his family (his wife Kristin is a writer originally from Arizona with an excellent website French Word a Day) had bought a house surrounded by vines in the flat area between Orange and the striking Dentelles de Montmirail which we know well from visits 10 years and more ago. The day was brilliantly sunny and the views magnificent
August - December 2007 Since the summer we have done relatively little in the way of tastings - a couple of quick trips to Château Grès Saint Paul with friends confirmed our good impressions of them (their website has been improved - take another look...) and in December we went to an open day at the olive oil producer Domaine de l'Oulivie (or Olivie - the website name has changed) which makes wonderful olive oil, olives and tapenade. We went (with friends from RER) for a beautiful winter day out in the countryside north of Montpellier, but also because some of our favourite winemakers from Bourgogne had come to present their wines in the south. Domaine Naudin Ferrand is a maker we have known since the mid-90s when we stayed with our friend Judi in their village and happened on their Cave there; since then we have often bought their wines and are particularly fond of the whites including a Haut Côtes de Beaune with a small proportion of pinot blanc alongside the chardonnay, and a number of excellent aligotés. We had a good day out, and came back with more whites ordered in advance. One of the Naudin sisters turns out to be a sister-in-law of the family which runs Oulivie. The following weekend we set out for Bourgogne for a short trip, with 3 vineyards on Friday 7 December and an open day at the Jacob Cave in Echevronne on Saturday 8. In the two days we tasted around 40 wines and (as far as our overworked taste-buds could tell) emerged with some bottles which will last us well into the next 10-15 years. 2005 was one of the great vintages in Bourgogne and we were determined to add to the Chambolle Musigny we had already ordered from Domaine Lucien Jacob - we were not disappointed. Some of the vineyards below have already featured in this diary - see below.
But only half an hour late, we arrived in Meursault, iconic village of white wines just south of Beaune, for one of our most interesting visits in a long time. We had been given the name of Gael Fouré by our friends Pierre and Michelle Poulalier (he married the childhood friend of their son Jérôme). Gael has joined with two colleagues to establish the new enterprise Fouré-Roumier-De Fossey. It's a brave step in such a prestigious locality, but they are making a tremendous start. Their first vintage, 2006, includes both a Meursault Villages and a Premier Crû as well as a Bourgogne Chardonnay which all tasted wonderful, and there is a Bourgogne Pinot Noir (red burgundy, in other words) which we had already tried and liked at the Poulaliers. In addition they had kick-started their business by finding wines from other producers which were well-made but surplus to need, and bottled them under their own label, and we found magnificent reds including Auxey Duresses and Chambolle Musigny which we have happily added to our cellar for future enjoyment. We ended the afternoon with Gael and his wife and children in their kitchen, a warmer place to taste the reds before moving on to our hotel in Savigny lès Beaune for the night. On Saturday afternoon we were at the Jacob open day, and tasted 20 wines including most of the 2004 and 2005 output from their Domaine and Jean-Michel's sister and brother-in-law's property, Domaine Forey, in Vosne Romanée. Their basic wine is an excellent red Morey-Saint-Denis but they make others including Vosne Romanée and a superb Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru which we liked too much! In general 2004 was a good but difficult year in the Côte d'Or and, although tasting all the reds from 04 and 05 is a difficult experience with tannins still uppermost and smells and flavours muted in wines that will not be ready for at least 5, or 10 or more years, the 2005s were more immediately appealing. We had a great 2 hours of tasting ending with chocolate and paté from other local producers, before drifting back to our hotel for a snooze before dinner! We drove straight back on Sunday morning, in less than 4½ hours. Burgundy is really not that far from home! I am still repacking the Cave and making sure the wines that need to be kept a while are well-labelled! With apologies to those who hoped for more frequent updates, here at last is a summary of our spring and early summer experiences among the vines, bottles and (of course) glasses. The wine store is complete, air conditioning installed and so the wine remains reasonably cool despite soaring temperatures outside. We have now begun to discover the perils of buying too much too soon - another couple of dozen bottles over their peak and earmarked for pears in red wine or sangria! But our most exciting moments have been making new discoveries locally. First we stumbled upon the Chemin des Rêves and new winemaker Benoit Viot in Grabels north-west of Montpellier. The vineyards straddle the nearby areas of Pic Saint Loup and Grès de Montpellier, but like many top winemakers in the Languedoc his best wines are vins de pays, including grape varieties such as cabernet sauvignon which are not in the Appellation Controlée regulations. The website gives the range and details of his wines, all of which are excellent - the mainly Carignan Bois moi (the title is a reference to the bottle labelled 'drink me' in Alice in Wonderland) is particularly delicious, drunk slightly cool. Its lighter style reflects his love of his native Loire valley, and is unusual for a Languedoc red. Benoit had been a pharmaceutical manager working for Boots in the UK and other companies, including a spell in South America, before setting out to fulfil his dream as a wine maker. We met him in the spring, then took friends back for a picnic in his vineyard in July - picture below (courtesy of Jeremy Taylor).
Also in the spring we had met a young man and woman - Guillaume et Marion Gravegeal, brother and sister - at a wine fair in Aigues Mortes. Their domaine near Pic Saint Loup is called Mas de Jon (label above), which seemed too good a coincidence to miss especially as the wines were good. They met us at their premises in Fontanès (like many French commune names there is more than one of these - the one in the Gard département is a few km north of Lunel, but theirs is about 20 km further west - confusing though!). They have only just started making wines after extensive training and are really re-launching an old family wine enterprise - their dad is mayor of the village - and building a new tasting caveau which will be worth visiting I think. Red and rosé wines are very good, but the white 100% marsanne is outstanding and we bought some immediately we had tasted it from the cuve a week before bottling. The area of Pic Saint Loup is among the best-known in the Languedoc appellation, and the link here is to a useful overview of some of the foremost producers there as well as having some lovely photos of vines and scenery. Sometime in May we were invited to go with neighbours to a tasting at Domaine La Croix Saint Roch in the village of Saint Sériès just north of Lunel. Jean-Pierre Boissier makes a wide range of wines including good reds and whites, an unusual sweet red wine and some marvellous unfortified muscats from late-harvested grapes - we could only begin to appreciate the range of wines in our first visit and hope to return in due course. July has been full of new wine experiences - not only nearby but in Italy. We had little idea what richness and variety of wine we would pass by on our journey across the north of the country, and we shall have to return to visit Ligurian and Piemontese wine areas, as well as those of Lombardy and Emilia Romagna, another time. But stopping in Verona we realised we were in the middle of wonderful wine country - the Veneto is apparently the most productive wine area in all of Italy - and we had superb Valpolicella with meals. The one which stays in my memory was a Valpolicella Classico 2006 from the maker Buglioni in the prominent wine village of San Pietro in Cariano north of Verona - a kaleidoscope of changing flavours which the books say are like wild cherry - I can see what they mean, but it is more complex and scented than a simple description can convey. And the Verona area also includes the village of Soave which is a well-known white wine - to be explored too in due course, as well as Prosecco, a sparkling wine from the Veneto which is increasingly popular and known beyond the region. Once we reached our friends' house in the north east of Italy last week we found ourselves in another excellent but little-known wine area, Friuli. On the Friday evening we decided to explore the area just north of their village, and in the hamlet of Ramandolo we found the Anna Berra winery perched on a steep winding road with magnificent views across the vineyards and away to the south (photos below). It was nearly 7 in the evening, but we were greeted with enthusiasm and courtesy by the wine maker, Ivan Monai, who spent an hour with us in one of the best tastings I have ever experienced - 8 wines, each carefully presented from new bottles in glasses rinsed with each new wine before we tasted it. And they were great wines too - of the reds, the cabernet franc stood out for me, and there are also dry whites (not mentioned on the website) of which we liked both the friulani (grape variety also known as tokai) and pinot grigio. But it was the 2 sweet wines made from late picked and for one wine partly-dried Verduzzo Friulano grapes that were really special. Ramondolo gives its name to one of these while the second, Anno Domini, the one from dried grapes, is fermented in oak barrels. We did not even taste the third sweet wine, Piccolit, also made from late picked and dried grapes, but when we return to the area we shall certainly seek it out.
A brief mention of a wine maker Livio Felluga whom we did not visit in Friuli. We'd originally booked to stay in their B&B but in the end stayed with our friends instead. But we heard, and confirmed by sampling a bottle we were given, that they make exceptional wines. The website is good too! Finally, our trip to our neighbouring village of Saint Christol last Friday (mentioned in the main diary) was interesting both for the wines and for the discussion beforehand of wine-making past, present and future between a local man who had written a history of wine in St Christol, a woman historian who had traced local wine back to Roman times, and the various local wine makers, the mayor and the head of tourism for the area. The village is to be the location of a new Pays Lunellois wine centre by 2008 (I think) - tourism and direct sales are important to local winemakers. It is also one of the communes in the vast Coteaux du Languedoc Appellation which has at times sought to have its own AOC. The discussion on the future showed some of the dilemmas between keeping things local and pride in the small area of Saint Christol, and the pressure of marketing which is to sell recognisable brands - farther afield, even 'Languedoc' does not mean much to wine buyers and there is a new attempt to market wines from this area with the tag 'South of France' - more about this on the wine notes page. Anyway, after 2 hours listening to this in the lengthening evening shadows we were invited to taste wines from 4 local producers and (rapture for Mary) there were some oysters to go with the whites! Among the reds we tried there were some lovely wines from the Mas de Theyron, an organic producer just north of St Christol. If you want to know more about St Christol producers they are listed on the village website. This month has as expected seen the building of the wine store. It's now well on the way to completion, and I have begun to unpack boxes and fill racks. Having started to sort the wine we have realised that we don't need to buy much for some time for current drinking - having left some in France and collected more in England over the past 5-6 years we have plenty that is nicely matured and ready to enjoy - but of course if we want to enjoy older wines in another 5-10 years' time we need to buy a bit now to lay down. This month we were glad to respond to an invitation from the brother/in law of our neighbours Monique and Michel to visit the Caveau des Terroirs (a cave co-operative) which he runs in Aniane (see also wine notes). Jacques and his colleague received us with kindness and warmth one morning and gave us a tasting and explanation of their wines with pride and enthusiasm. Although the Caveau is a near neighbour of much more (in)famous wine makers, this was to us in no way second-best - a well-thought-out range of reds, and excellent white and rosé too. Bordeaux grape varieties (cabernet sauvignon and merlot) are firmly embedded in production here as elsewhere in the Languedoc, alongside the traditional syrah, grenache, carignan and mourvèdre, but here there was interesting mixing of the two - grenache, cabernet and carignan - reminiscent of the new world. The wines were excellent and very well-priced, and the top-of-the-range Les Caillasses, Syrah with some grenache, was outstanding and should last well. Over the festive season we started to sample the wine collected over 5 or 6 years which we'd stored in France. It was interesting to renew acquaintance with bottles we had not seen for some time. I'd worked out which might be ready to drink but found that a few had begun to deteriorate. In general I have often found that wines keep longer than the experts predict, but some of these were not of high enough quality to survive the 6 or 7 years they had been left. However, others amply justified their purchase and storage - 1999 Côtes du Rhône Villages Cairanne and Rasteau from Domaine Rabasse Charavin (one of our favourite women wine makers Corinne Couturier) and some 2000 Côtes du Rhône from Montbrison, a special reserve wine from a maker Mary had discovered. And the sweet rich Bonnezeaux and Chaume chenin blancs from the Layon valley south of Anjou are a joy. So the next step was to collect all the wine we had left in England. We'd hoped that the removal firm would bring it - they said they were used to doing so - but they would not agree to store the bottles on their sides in case they leaked (!) so we decided we would transport them ourselves and kept them in a friend's garage for 3 months from October until this month. (Most readers will know that wines with corks need to be kept on their sides so that the corks stay moist and keep a good seal - if they are left upright for any length of time the corks can dry out and air gets in). I left Lunel on 9 January and drove up to the East Midlands overnight, collected the wine and set out on 11 January to arrive back here on the afternoon of 12th. Apart from atrocious weather in England 11th, the journey was without major problems and the wine was packed well in the Berlingo and arrived here safely. Most of this is better known to us, having been collected over the past few years and kept with us in Wirksworth and then Mansfield, and it includes some splendid premier crû and grand crû Bourgogne - much to be discovered afresh over the coming years. Having driven the French route both ways in a few days I was struck again by the wonderful progression of wine areas you travel through - south from Calais you reach Champagne at Reims, and continue through this huge area past Troyes into the Aube; then Bourgogne and the long line of hills of the Côte d'Or, past Beaune and through the Côtes Châlonnais, then past Mâcon and the mountains of northern Beaujolais, home of the 10 top crû villages, then the picturesque southern Beaujolais which we've yet to explore before you reach Lyon. South of Lyon the Côtes du Rhône begin dramatically with the almost vertical hillsides of the Côte Rôtie and Condrieu, again areas we've not yet visited. After Valence (and the turn east to Die which we so often took on twinning visits and holidays) the wine area spreads on both sides of the motorway in the southern Rhône area and continues without a break into the Costières de Nîmes and Côteaux du Languedoc. There are many other wine areas in the rest of France, but this north-south route down the east of the country has been part of our lives and inspiration as we have visited France for well over 10 years. Now we have a couple of months to build and install the air conditioning for our wine store. I've made plans and all I need to do now is to buy the materials and get to work. There are few houses in Lunel with ready-made cellars because the ground is low-lying and full of water sources (we have one, with a pump, in our garden) so we have to isolate an area above ground. The adventure continues. Now we have moved, a major project is to create a wine store, well-insulated from summer heat, in part of the garage. At the same time we are starting to reassemble our stocks of wine from here and there. Earlier this month we went to the Diois to collect the boxes we'd left in a friend's cellar for several years now - one or two boxes rather decrepit, but the wine evidently in good condition. We found that one rather short-lived Châtillon-en-Diois red which we'd left in France mistakenly is now past its best, and a good example of what not to keep, but in the main the vintage charts tell us that the wines we have kept for 5-10 years are going to be well worth drinking over the next few years! Next month I am making a brief trip back to England with the car to collect the wine we left in Wirksworth. Basically, the removal firm would not transport it with the bottles laid flat to keep the corks moist, and we would not risk it being upright for weeks on end, so we decided to bring it ourselves. Local wines of the Hérault We are beginning to explore in more detail the vineyards and wines around Béziers and the region in which we are staying while we wait to move further east. Lunel is at the very eastern edge of the Hérault, and there are innumerable small areas further west before you get to the better known Minervois, Corbières and Fitou. The Languedoc still produces more wine than any other French region and the difference now from the wine lake days of the 80s is that each is fiercely proud of its rising standards and local specialties. Think Costières de Nîmes, Pic Saint Loup (in the east), and in the west Faugères, La Clape, Côtes de Thongue and Coteaux du Libron and you just scratch the surface. Wine favourites here. Burgundy
– Côte Chalonnais - Hauts Côtes de Beaune We
pushed ahead with our long trip from Normandy to Burgundy to call on the
Domaine Pillot in Mellecy, near Mercurey in the Côte
Chalonnais, to collect
wine we had ordered through 3D. Now
that we shall be living in France we have not continued other links with
makers through 3D – we can call in on them anyway and have got to know
some well – but we decided to keep this new link of Mary’s for
another year, since this – a special cuvee of the 2003 premier crû
for 3D customers – was her
first vintage there. In
the event we arrived early and were welcomed by the vigneron, one of two
brothers who offered us a tasting of the 2004 red Mercurey, a great
treat. Tasting en route is
often a problem, since someone has to drive, but we often spit out what
we taste anyway – you can always take a bottle or two of something
nice away and enjoy it later. But
this time Mary and the vigneron at any rate were able to enjoy a glass
or two of a wine which is richer and more approachable than some of the
red burgundies from further north around Beaune. The
following morning we sampled the latter at one of our oldest contacts,
Domaine Lucien Jacob in Echevronne in the Hauts Côtes
de Beaune. We have bought a
lot of their wines, increasingly the higher quality premiers
crûs
from Gevrey, Savigny and Beaune itself, in the past few years and much
of this has still to be opened and sampled in its maturity.
This time we were looking for wines ready to drink as gifts for
our hosts further south, and lighted on two very different village wines
from Savigny lès
Beaune, in consecutive years 2001 and 2002.
Both were of good quality, but
they also showed the difficulty and interest of the pinot noir
grape on first tasting; Mary said “if you were offered this without
knowing it was wine you might not guess”. But when we drank the 2002 with friends at a meal a few days
later the appeal was instant and the development as the bottle was
emptied marvellous. Die
and the Diois We
have had many interesting and enjoyable visits to vignerons in the
Diois, and one of our longest-standing links is with Didier Cornillon,
who had only begun his wine-making life independently of the Cave
Co-operative when we were first introduced to him in 1992.
Since then, every year has seen a new enterprise and some new and
delicious products. Die
is known more widely for Clairette de Die than for other local wines,
and the Cave Co-operative (Jaillance) now produces 7 million bottles a
year of this seductive sweet fizz.
Oddly although it is named after a grape variety, the wine called
Clairette de Die usually
contains little or no clairette grape, being made mainly from Muscat,
while the other major sparkling wine of the Diois, Crémant
de Die, is made with clairette grapes!
Didier makes excellent examples of both, but our aim this time
was to discover or revisit some of his other wines, including a
marvellous-looking pink sparkler he calls Clandestine, made from pinot
noir whose use for sparkling wine is not encouraged by the powers that
be outside Champagne – thence the name.
Our first tasting is keenly awaited this week, on our 28th
wedding anniversary. Didier
has also set up a new enterprise in Tunisia, and we’ve already tried
the red (a powerful Rhône
blend of syrah, carignan and mourvedre) and the rosé
(a very unusual slightly spicy taste from the same red grapes), and look
forward to the white (made from sauvignon blanc and also by report with
an exotic and unexpected taste). The
wines are very reasonably priced and elegantly bottled – when we
visited, Didier was about to leave to Tunisia with a whole circle of
local friends for the official opening of the Cave there. As
if that were not enough, his other French wines including those from the
Châtillon en Dois AOC and are also good as always – we have had
excellent whites this time made from chardonnay and viognier, and have
enjoyed the reds from gamay (some with a bit of pinot noir) over the
years. Lastly, one of our favourites is a late-picked sweet wine –
from various white grapes including viognier - named each year for the
date of the harvest. The
most recent is an incredibly late 19 janvier, which we shall also
try soon. A
tasting sensation During
our visit we were invited to see the wine cellar of a local wine
connoisseur, a young businessman who lives near Die. He is a passionate enthusiast for Bourgogne, and once we had
marvelled at the stylish house and very French blend of spare modernity
and traditional furnishing, and at the sophisticated and costly climate
control in his basement cellar, we began an incredible excursion among
some of the top red wines of the Côte
de Nuits. After
a brief opening glass of lovely Mâconnais
chardonnay, we
must have tasted nearly a dozen wines in an hour, revealing an
extraordinary range of nose and flavour, and I could note only a few.
Those I did single out were a Vosne Romanée premier crû ‘Les
Violettes’ 2004
(Clerget), and 2 grands crûs Clos de Vougeot, a 2003 Hadelot Noellat
(with all the ripeness and depth of the hot summer that year, atypical
of Burgundy generally) and a 2004 from Henri Rebouseau. It was a remarkable hour or two – our cellar will be less
technically exalted and the contents much more varied in quality, but it
gave us a glimpse of how things could be! May
2006 Mon
15 May - Echevronne A
brief visit to the Jacobs to buy a few bottles (1996 Haut Côtes and
Savigny, which should be ready to drink...) for the week.
As we sit this evening I'm drinking some of their crémant which
is pleasant but better for me with a little crème de cassis!
Then we set out for Beaujolais.
It
was a quiet, sunny drive down the motorway to Belleville, and we drifted
on round Mont Brouilly to a warm welcome at Domaine les Roches Bleues,
where Christiane Lacondemine (her husband is Dominique) showed us round.
She was glad we'd come because she is uncertain of her English
and was expecting new English 3D partners.
We had a jolly tour of the old and newer vineyards, now being
planted in wider and higher rows to facilitate cultivation.
Inside, they were preparing for bottling the 2005, with huge
heaps of bottles swaying across the yard in Dominique's strong arms, and
the bottling lorry waiting in the road outside.
We saw the insides of the barriques coated in sediment and
tartar, which has to be scraped out by crawling inside - photos of D
doing so were displayed. The
tasting was wonderful, although the 02 and 03 which we tried for
comparison showed how far the 04 we bought has to develop.
We usually buy 50:50 Brouilly and Côte de Brouilly since the
latter lasts longer. Tue
16 May - Côte
de Nuits et de Beaune Woke
to rumbles of thunder and a torrential downpour
which thankfully cleared before we set out for Magny and the
Domaine Naudin-Ferrand. I
had ordered wines from them and although it was early for some, I tasted
some whites to add to the reds already waiting for us.
The 2003 aligoté was particularly rich and unusual.
The grand crû Echezaux turned out to be more than twice the
price of the Corton we bought later - we could only put this down to
scarcity value. Our
second tasting today was at Dubreuil-Fontaine in Pernand Vergelesses.
Mary and I had been there more than 10 years ago on the
recommendation of a wine merchant in Sault in the south, and the welcome
this time was as attentive and civilised as before.
Their big attraction is the range of Premiers Crûs and Grands Crûs
they produce, the latter Corton and Corton Charlemagne from the famous
hillside next to the village. The
2002 Corton was magnificent and needs to wait at least 10 years before
it is opened although you can tell the quality and complexity within,
but the 2003 is much more immediate and rich, like so many wines from
that hot summer. Wed
17 May - Côte
Chalonnais – Auxey Duresses - Beaune We
reached Mellecey only slightly late after a detour in Chagny which led
to a hair-raising ascent out of Bouzeron and towards Rully over a
spectacular hilltop with long views to the Saône valley.
We went to meet Mary's new vineyard share, Domaine Pillot, where
Madame greeted us with gravity and attention, offering us difficult reds
from 2004 and an overpriced white, and a 2003 Grand Crû which proved
most acceptable. Knowing
that M would return for the 04 when her option is offered, we took a few
bottles of 03 for more immediate use. Then
back towards Beaune. We
diverted to the Dom. de Moulin aux Moines where the woman owner, new
there since our visit more than 10 years ago, put us through a tasting
of difficult Auxey Duresses in which she clearly had only interest
rather than passion, and ended with a nicer 2002 Monthélie which we
thought would develop well, so bought a couple of bottles. On
the edge of Beaune we
stopped on impulse at the Cave des Hautes Côtes.
This has always been a reliable and excellent source of wines
from the region, and the young woman assistant here offered us a
beautiful (white) St Aubin to taste, and impressed us with her knowledge
and dedication to her job. We
bought 3 bottles even though we will have to take them to England and
back again! In
the evening Jean-Michel Jacob appeared with our Clairette de Die ordered
from Didier Cornillon and delivered that day, and joined us for a glass
of the Grand Crû Corton 2003 we had been floating through with the
cheese – it was indeed ready to drink although it will improve for
many years! Thu
18 May Today
we traveled north-west to a maker near Vézelay – a
woman who had learnt 'from scratch' after bringing up children,
and had helped re-establish the vineyard in an area of the Yonne
completely devastated by Phylloxera and the advent of railways which
replaced the river trade to Paris.
Her wines, a 2002 pinot noir not for sale and 2 2004 chardonnays
which were, were all excellent, interesting and enjoyable, and we were
welcomed warmly at her kitchen table for the tasting. Fri
19 May - Le Charlemagne An hour and a half tasting at the Jacobs, emerging with many bottles between us and later to Pernand Vergelesses for a meal at le Charlemagne. This, it turned out, is an extraordinary fusion of Japanese and French cooking and the most extraordinary collection of shapes and kinds of presentation equipment - plates of all shapes and sizes, and little wooden pedestals, and containers reminiscent of the chemistry lab. The use of little blackboards and chalk labels made the whole thing a little reminiscent of schooldays, but the whole symphony of flavours and subtle combinations of taste and texture were almost overwhelming. The wines were a lovely St Aubin white premier crû and another superb Volnay premier crû from the Hubert Montille vineyard of Mondovino fame. The latter was the link that drew us to the restaurant, since like some Burgundy producers but luckily not many, he does not welcome personal customers to his Cave. |
