Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Bourgogne Day 4

Hi all,

Monday was a really interesting day where we focused mostly on proprietaires-exploitants.

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Monday

Dublere in Savigny-les-Beaunes.

Dublere is an ex American journalist who when working from London in the 80s grew into liking Bourgogne so much that he decided to move here 20+ years ago and start his own wine making facility.
He describes himself as a farmer, as he says that 85% of his time is in the vineyard and that the vineyard makes the wine.
He is the 1st wine maker we met who only had 2013 vintage to taste, and we did a tasting from the barrels as he sells his production in the bottle nearly in full every year. He only had to sell a few (10 or so bottles) from only some of his wines and vintages.
Here we tried maybe 5 Grand Cru , about 10 1er Cru and 5 or so other wines. He explained really well all our questions about vineyard regulations and so on. He has wines from a lot of different appelations. It was really probably the most interesting visit. Usually he doesn't take visitors but thanks to the introduction from my friend Toshi from La Nuit Blanche in Ginza we were able to visit.
We bought about 1 case here, among which some grand cru, Corton I think.
It is pleasant and impressive to see what an American business man can do in 20 years starting small. He does about 35,000 bottles per year now. For example one of his main buyers is the Gordon Ramsey restaurant chain.
Unfortunately also he explained that in Bourgogne they use to have hail every other year only but for the last 4 years they had hail, and bad one, every year. His production for 2014 in some places is only 30% of the normal amount.

Fribourg in Villers-La-Faye

In the afternoon we visited a domaine in Villers-la-Faye which is over the hills in the Hautes Cotes de Nuits appellation. The domaine is a small house and they focus on the Hautes Cotes and such. We tried a few wines from this appelations and we bought some reds that we found pleasant. It was interesting to compare wines in the 10-20 euro range with the ones we tried that morning.

Thibert - Corgoloin

And at 4pm we went to another very family oriented domaine where Mr. Thibert who lives in a house that looks like any other house down the street took us through the garage, through a little working space in to a wine cellar that looked very old. He seems to be really small and doing everything himself. He's been doing it for 25 years as he explained and focused on Nuits-St-Georges. I did not know what to expect and the 1st wines were just ok, but the 4rd and last one, a 1er Cru from memory, was one of our favorites. He explained that because Pinot Noir is so low in tannis one can and should, on the more elegant climats, extract as much as possible from the skins. So as a result one can get a wine with deep black aromas and very interesting that will age very well. I look forward to trying it in the US and also seeing how it will age for a while.

 

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