Burgundy January 2020

After Cote Rotie and on the way to Paris we had to stop in Burgundy.

For the record we stopped for lunch in Macon, in an amazing castle, very authentic. It felt really old and had a lot of charm. I recommend:

The restaurant "Un Passage au Château" in Varennes-les-Macon

In Burgundy, unfortunately, most winemakers were on vacation (gone skiing?).

We were however extremely happy to taste wines at 3 different properties :

This trip again I convinced myself that there is a big difference (in price) and in quality between the white 1er Cru from Burgundy and the "village" ( aka no-cru version). The price is double but the quality is totally worth the price difference (usually 50-60eur a bottle though).

On the other side I am not certain the Grand Crus ( about 100 EUR and up) are worth the price difference vs a 1er Cru. Perhaps as I age (like a wine ?!) I will be able to tell the difference more between the 1er Cru and Grand Cru, who knows. 

The other thing we learned (reminded ourselves in fact) is that in Burgundy referencing to a domain by the last name is confusing. Often the entire family lives in the same village. Each cousin has the same last name. And therefore there are multiple Chavy domains. And in fact more often than not there are multiple domains with the same last name. You HAVE to remember the first names in order to properly reference a domain you want to visit or try.

Domaine Quentin Jeannot

Quentin has joined his family in 2015 and started working with his parents on the property.

Quentin welcomed us at his house on Saturday at 5pm. It turned out it was his birthday that day! So Happy Birthday to Quentin ( January 11th).

We loved his wines. His 1er Cru Reds are very well priced around 25eur ( particularly cheap for Burgundy !). We, however, preferred his 1er Cru Whites. We got a case. (My particular taste is that I prefer New World Pinot Noirs vs the old world Pinot Noirs. However the Burgundy whites I think are the most elegant and refined and I usually love them. )

(We were also lucky that for Quentin's birthday he had a friend over who works with the Domain Rayas owner and after chatting for an hour his friend opened and had us taste also a Rayas Chateau-Neuf-du-Pape from 2004 and WOW, what a wine !!

 He also opened a Domaine des Tours, Vaucluse village. It is a wine also made by Chateau Rayas winemaker but with no particular AOC and honestly for 60-70$ it's probably one of the best prices-to-quality I ever tried. You have to try it !

Here is how to buy it at your own risk : https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/rayas+dom+de+tour+rsrv+rouge+igp+vaucluse+pays+france

We also tried a Bandol, after all of these wines. Unfortunately, after the Rayas it was hard to keep up with the Bandol)

Cave de Chassagne Montrachet

On Sunday not many places were opened so we tried some wine at the Chassagne-Montrachet village wine shop, called Cave de Chassagne Montrachet. Most of them were uninteresting, I think not worth the trip. Got some 1er Cru. 

Domain Philippe Chavy

Here we met with Philippe who was also very kind to welcome us on a Sunday morning at 10am. He is mostly focused on making wine and he honestly told us he is not great with people. However, he was extremely nice to us and we had a great tasting. I think he is great with people. 

We loved his 1er Cru wines again, some more than others. We will certainly go back to get more.

What stood out to me was his barrel in which he had changed the end wood piece for a piece of plexiglass:

I find it fascinating to see what is happening inside a wine barrel while it matures. You can see on the bottom of the yeast and deposits. And you can see the color. Phillippe Chavy changed the wood end for plexiglass at both ends and put a light behind it. He said the wine quality was not affected enough for him to notice (he keeps it mostly in the dark and oak amount is probably similar. 

And last but not least here are a few more useful charts I got from various walls, for general wine culture and reference: