7 Burgundies. Masters of wine disagreed. (feat. Echezeaux)

We don't want to ask him what he did in the bathroom. We've got Burgundy here. This is an interesting tasting because it's seven wines all from the 2020 vintage which is billed as a very good vintage and a single producer said and all the wines coming from have a different place on the label ranging from AC Bourgogne all the way up to an Echezeau Grand Cru. So we have one Grand Cru, one Premier Cru, four Village wines and then one AC Bourgogne. Well that's a complex. Yeah. It's also very interesting and I would anticipate it's going to be difficult. If you think about the way that Burgundy was put together and the quality descriptions in Burgundy, first of all it was always believed that the vineyards at the bottom of the hill were too wet, cold, the vineyards at the top of the hills too stony and dry and so it was nicely in the middle, the milder limestone and the slopes were very important. The steepness of the slopes and the direction of the slopes and generally speaking because it was so difficult to ripen wines, I mean back in the day your regular Bourgogne had to be I think 10.5% or 11.5% and you could call it Bourgogne Superior if it had 12% or 12.5% or something. Those are laughable numbers these days you know. They used to chaptalize all the time whether the God was good enough to give them decent sugars or not they were chaptalized just in case and today it's 13.1%, 13.2%, 13.5% without chaptalization. God gave them sugars, unfortunately it was in a bag from a different place. From a different place and again for folks who may not know, chaptalization is that of adding sugar to the fermenting must to try to bump up the alcohol levels but also increase the fermentation time to try to extract as much hopefully good stuff from the skins as you could. I personally, even though a lot of the producers don't chaptalize anymore, in fact they consider it really bad form to chaptalize. I made Burgundy 2019 in a winery that does not chaptalize anything except my cuvee. Why did I do that? Because for me when I'm looking at great Burgundy I want mouthfeel. Mouthfeel is related to glycerol and glycerol related to alcohol. I sort of feel like at 12%, 12.2% you don't really help the mouthfeel along. You can still get it but you don't really help it along. To get back to climate then, now with everything warming slopes that you needed to ripen the wines might be now slopes that potentially in very warm years could perhaps be a little bit too warm. What does that mean then? Does that throw the whole system into jeopardy? And so there's another element to it. When you're making wine that's Premier Cru or Grand Cru, irrespective of the weather, the slope, this or that, irrespective of the grapes you get, as long as the wine can pass a test that it would sometimes have to to go through to make sure that it is of the quality and style associated with its appellation, the producers, because they get more money, give it their best shot, their best barrels. They can harvest, do a little bit of green harvesting or whatever it might be to increase the concentration or whatever. So it's now not just the appellation itself that's talking, it's the winemaking based on the price these guys can get for their wine in the market. What's interesting, 2020 was a much easier vintage for the growers. Flowering was in April, it was warm April. There had been less of winter rain, so the water tables were higher. Then during the song time, they got hit with a lot of heat. I think July, August was the worst heat. This vintage by some critics or observers is hailed as having a lot of freshness, which you don't put together freshness and heat necessarily. But I think the heat was concentrated in summer months and not fully during the ripening period. If the vine shuts down, it's possible to retain some freshness, though apparently the malic acid levels were very low because of the heat, but had very good tartaric acid levels supposedly. Whenever I hear that across the board, that there's very good tartaric acid levels, some of those things can come in bags as well. I remember back in the days when diners were roaming the earth and I was studying for the master wine exam, speaking with some Burgundy producers, their critique of California Pinot was, oh, but it's too much color, too much ripeness, the alcohol levels are too high. And now the alcohol levels and ripeness levels in Burgundy are at or higher than the levels that California had for Pinot 20 some odd years ago. You said that tartaric acid comes in bags too. They're allowed to add it in Burgundy, right? I think they are. But the key thing that in most of France, in those places where you can chaptalize, you cannot chaptalize and acidify at the same time, because that is a way of elevating really ---- grapes. So if you're going to chaptalize, you can't acidify and vice versa. I'm glad that I know up front that these are seven Burgundies because it's been quite a while since I've seen Burgundy that looks like this. You don't want to say that Burgundy has to be pale, but it's usually pale. And when I look at this, I say, this guy has got a winemaking style. And I told you guys I was going to bring a surprise wine to add to this tasting, remember? Yes. It will be very hard to... Oh yeah, you should have. It's on the collar, it will be really hard to... Miami? Yeah, Miami. That's right, Miami looks like this to me. Right? The standard that I would do, I often like to look at the wines from above when I'm trying to decide where am I going to start. I prefer to try to start with lighter colored wines and work my way up to the heavier color wines. With my expectation, not necessarily going to be the truth, is that the AC Bourgogne is going to be, if not the lightest colored wine, one of the lighter colored wines. And then the expectation that maybe the Escher Soap being the darkest color, but I'm thinking it could be, there's a And so my expectation, if I had a heavier, a deeper colored wine, in the back of my head, the question would be, could this be Jeffrey Chambertin? And you think because it's from the same producer, it's going to be a little bit harder than if it was different producers? Very much so. If you had different producers, it'd be impossible. Okay, great. Let's dive in. All right, let's start. All right. They all look more or less the same to me, except number four. My scores are based upon how they're balanced right at this point in time. Not, oh, this is the most oak, so maybe it could be the Escher Soap, so I'll score it higher. I didn't do that. If I was taking the master wine exam, I wouldn't have tasted the wines this fast, because I would have been writing and giving my palate a chance to recover. I don't have to go to the bathroom. I came back, my palate was fresher, and the next wine I taste was going to taste better than it would have if I hadn't, because my palate was getting tired from the tannins. We don't want to ask him what he did in the bathroom. All right, so shall we start? Could you tell me what your top three wines were? Sure. My top three wines, and again, I didn't have a single wine of the group that scored less than 90 points. So everything got over 90 points. I'm with Patrick. I had one 89 to 90. Everything else got over 90. My highest score was the wine number five. That got 96 points. Wine number six got 95 points. Wine number two got 94 points. We couldn't be more different on that. What was your top three, Peter? My top wine number seven, 95 points. My second wine was wine number six, 92 points. And my third wine was wine number three, 91 to 92 points. What about you? Okay, I didn't point them, but I think number seven I put as the Grand Cru, number six the Premier Cru, and the third one that I liked was, and I think was number five. I thought number seven was the Grand Cru. Well, it's got the most oak on it, right? So if you go on the assumption that the wine were seemingly to have received the most oak, right, is going to be the Grand Cru. I'll tell you this. He uses 100% new oak on the Escher's oak. Well, if that's the case, then that would point to the Escher's oak being wine number seven. Right. The amount of oak on the wine tells you how seriously the winemaker was taking it. He's not going to waste this great oak on his entry-level wine. But there's other things going on. There's complexity, but good complexity. There's a palate weight. There's a progression across the palate. One of the key elements of great Pinot Noir is mouthfeel. So you want silkiness, soft, silky, sexy, all the rest of it. These were such good wines! I like that wine, though it needs more time. And there were wines that I thought that were better balanced, at least at this point in time, and showed greater complexity. So that was a function of my scores. The nose was very tight, and the structure was very tight. And I thought, ah, there's something there, and it needs more time. But I don't know what that's going to be like. And then a step up from that would be a wine similar, but then when I put it in my mouth, I get some expansive fruit up front, and the tannins are shutting it down, but I still get some perfume that lingers on. And that's sort of the difference between a wine that I gave 92 points for, if it didn't have that, but if it had that, it got 95 or 96 points. In a way, I didn't want to like these wines, because I love elegance and complexity, and I don't drink Pinot Noirs that I like this generally and like them. So this is a hit against myself. My favorite was No. 3, and then No. 6, and No. 7. No. 7, by just nosing them, I knew it's... Well, I was pretty confident it was an Assejo. And it has a high intensity on your nose and palate, and it shows them off. No. 7, I didn't really have to even taste it to tell if it's a Grand Cru. I would also try to find a Premier Cru. You said No. 6 would be the one? No, I could be totally wrong. If I have a look at my scores, the Premier Crus were from what appellation? New St. George. If I had to shoot for one, I would say that No. 6 was the Premier Cru. That was my second highest scoring wine, right? That was what I was talking about before, where on the nose, it was tight, but there was some cherry there and some slight earthiness. For me, cherry can be a riper form with Pinot Noir, raspberry, and perfume in Burgundy. If it gets riper, I get some cherry on it. And then I had some really nice expansive early on fruit that I really liked. And that had... No. 6. ...had perfume. Yeah. And even though the tannins were firm and the wine was overall tight, but there was a core element of perfume that for me lingered. And which one is the least? Good question. Patrick definitely doesn't agree with me on this one. My least, and I feel bad calling it least, because they were all really, really good wines. My least was wine No. 5. I scored No. 96. I love that wine. And yeah, the fifth one was my third good wine. We're all over the place. Yeah, we're all over the place. So what I think is going to be fun is that we look at one at a time. Let's not do them all in a row. Look at one. Let's have a taste of it again. And then we can talk about it a little bit. And then call me an Uber. Why don't you just say which one we think is the AOC? No, we can go one by one. This is so much fun. Wine No. 1 is the Nuit Saint-Georges Premier Cru. Wine No. 1. It didn't have much on the nose. I had alcohol, cherry berry, tight. The palate was richer. And again, I got complexity. Perfume, berries, some mineral versus some slight greenness, plus some anise. I mean, there's a lot there. Though it had firm tannins. And I actually put on my question mark Premier Cru here. I said it was a village wine, but on the other hand, I also said it had a great amount of oak on it. So I'm sort of talking against myself here. Very rich in color. Not quite opaque. Very red. To me, this of all of them seemed to be the lowest pH wine in terms of the color. So I looked here and there was quite a bit of extract here. On the palate, there was a Swedish entry. So full ripe. Not sweet as in sweet, but full ripe entry. Very powerful. But then quite tannic. And what I find with tannin is that it shuts down the aftertaste. So this particular level of tannin means it needs more time rather than it's unbalanced. Good acidity. I love the progression across the palate. Although it wasn't what I would call the peacock. Which is where, you know, as a peacock's tail opens, it wasn't quite there. Yeah, I wrote Premier Cru for this one. I thought. The amount of oak they put on it. That's what I wrote here. On the nose, oak, vanilla. I couldn't see much of the fruit because it was the first one that I... It was the most obviously oaky wine. Yeah, right. Should we move on? Yeah, let's move on. So we finish up by midnight. Okay. Number two. I thought it was a wine to age. I don't know if you agree. It's got my typical Givray comment. Quite astringent. Yeah, quite tight, needs time. Okay. I gave it 94 points. I thought for all that, there were still some aspects to the wine that I really liked. I'm sort of out there. I'm an outlier. Because very tannic Burgundy, I end up marking down because the tannins interfere with the length of the finish and the mouthfeel. And with Burgundy for me, the most important characteristic, the one thing that Pinot Noir does that no other grapes except perhaps Merlot grown in Bordeaux can do is the mouthfeel. It was tight, hard shoulders, but it had some very nice fruit. And based upon how one perceived that, right? I gave it 94 points because I perceived it better than Peter did. But we both viewed the wine in fairly similar terms. Wine number three. I really liked this wine. It was one of my top three. I loved it too. So you were fixing to love it, huh? That was the fixing, wasn't it? Okay. Tight, firm tannins. But it had what was nice. It had a perfume. But I was talking about wine that can have tight tannins. But here I had these tight tannins and the fruit toned down, but I had this perfume that can linger on my palate a lot. And so I gave that 92 points. I said it's still tight. It needs time. But I really liked the fact that the perfume lingered on the wine. I gave it 92. You see, there's an underrated vintage. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I agree. So 92. You liked this wine more than the other two, previous two wines, Peter. Is that correct? For current consumption. Right. It doesn't have the stuffing of these previous two wines. It has good acidity, right? It's got good acidity. It's got more of the elegance and complexity in a lineup that doesn't have a lot of that. But it's ready to drink right now. It's more pronto, and yeah, it's my kind of wine. And now tasting it, but it sat in the glass, it has still changed considerably. It's not nearly as tightly tannic as it was when I first tasted it. No, I liked it. You liked number three? It would probably be my number four. This is an extract that's almost like Cabernet. This guy's out there. Okay. Whoever's making the wine, and I can tell you, it's not the same guy. When I first tasted this wine, not the same guy. These used to be pale wines, these. Oh, okay. The Dijon clones of Pinot Noir that have been used for replanting give you more deeply colored wines. Until 1988 in Bordeaux, Brettanomyces was considered to be an element of terroir. Oh, my god. Until 1988. It was a light-colored wine, right? So the assumption is that this is going to be the AC Bourgogne. So that's the lowest price. Right, okay. So we got that, the regional wine. I scored it 90 to 91. I thought I was officiant, I knew it. I was drinking a lower-level wine. I still scored it 90 to 91 because I thought within that context, it was really good. If you have a look at the price of that wine versus the price of the others and the score, that's the standout. I thought it was outstanding. It had perfume, it had raspberry, blackberry, slight greenness, but then it was expansive and floral and perfumed. I loved it. Yeah, you see, it was one of the best AC Bourgogne you ever had, right? Yeah, yeah. It's $50, so it's not cheap. It's not cheap. But… So, Eau Cordonnée from most… I mean, I sell one right now from Gros. It's like a $35 bottle of wine. You're talking about $50? It has to be good. Okay. The next wine, number five. Number five was my favorite. Actually, Patrick's favorite. Yeah. Right? Louis Saint-Georges, Eau Beaudicombe. Old vines. But it is not premier. Not premier, no. So again, so this one, there was just so much to it. There was complexity and richness, but elegance and power. It's more ready to drink now than some of the other wines. Number six was my favorite, Patrick's favorite, and your favorite, too. Did you like this one, too? Yeah, it was my second. This is Von Romani. Oh, okay. So we all liked number six. Yeah, I liked it a lot. Beautiful fruit on that, huh? Six is fantastic. Beautiful fruit, perfume, wonderful balance, long. I wrote down complex, and also it has power by elegance to it. That's a typical Von Romani Pinot Noir. That's outstanding. That's my favorite wine. And now let's... Yeah, no-brainer, number seven. I'm interested in tasting it again as it sat in the glass, because it didn't get my highest score. But again, this is a wine that ages for decades. Right. So this is the one that I could smell from here. Yeah, that one, you can pass over the oak, because number one, it had a lot of oak. But this one, you can smell so many things. So I think, you know, when we're doing this, the more serious the appellation, the more nuances there are to the wine, even if the winemaking is heavy-handed. You realize that there's a level of complexity there, layers of complexity that you just simply can't do under two circumstances. You can't do them if you're using lesser vineyards, and you can't do them unless you're prepared to give them everything, all the money they need, et cetera, et cetera. And now that previously, when I first tasted it, structured, it was complex. It was surprisingly long, but still very tight. And it has opened up since that time. So I've got a bit more perfume that lingers on the palate. I still have it on my palate after a small taste. So my score would go up to probably 96 on this one. Just because it developed in the glass. So as we tasted them, who scored this the best wine? Me. It was my best. I wrote down best. Your best? Yeah. Okay, so your best, your best, my best. I think it's fair to say that the guys have done a decent job in a warming world to get three people to agree that that's the best wine. Out of seven. So I think we have to say to Jean Tardy, well done! Yeah, well done. It was pretty easy to point this one as a Grand Cru. I'm glad it was easy for you, because it was not easy for me. Yeah, but previously you did mention that number seven has the best quality. But then right now for drinking, you said you preferred other wines. So it's pretty damn delicious in the glass right now. What a great tasting. Yeah. There was not a single wine here that I didn't really like. It's interesting. When I go through a tasting like this, first of all, the color is mind-boggling for Burgundy. Second of all, we drank all these wines from all the various terroirs, and for the most part, I for one, Patrick, nothing scored less than 90 points. You think you could have said that about Burgundy 25 years ago? Half of them were undrinkable. Not undrinkable, that's not. But half of them required you to be really into that kind of thing. These are just absolutely gorgeous drinking wines. So I would imagine that it might be possible to say that with Global Warming, perhaps we've robbed the very best of the ultimate in elegance and complexity, but the winners are everything else. There was no way 25 years ago that this Appalachian, the Bourgogne, a wine would come anywhere close to this in quality or complexity. In most synergies, those were lean, green, mean wines that were lightly colored and had very little charm. And now, it's a charming wine. You said that Origo is making really good Pinot, but is there any other region that could do something like this? It's a great question because I'm living there right now. Germany, people are saying that Germany is the future. I haven't seen it yet, and I made wine in Germany last year by telephone and Skype and all the rest of it. I told the guy what to do, and he had tanks specially built for what I wanted to do. But no, Germany is not there. The point is that Germany can provide wines at the lower levels here for half the price. So right now, that's Germany's forte. But look to Germany for the future. So where else in the world? Alsace, but again, to get the perfume that we've got here in Bourgogne, it's very hard to do. In my mind, the best Pinot Noirs outside of Bourgogne came from Switzerland. I was on a trip to Switzerland a number of years ago, and the top quality Swiss Pinots could go shoulder to shoulder with some top Bourgogne wines. The problem is that we see virtually none of them here in the United States. Some are shipped around the EU, but the vast majority are consumed locally. And they're the same price. They're the same price. But yeah, I agree with Patrick. So where's good Pinot Noir to be had? I think Oregon has stepped up its game unbelievably. Tasmania. Patrick and I were there. We had thought about buying land there. We should have, but anyway. The perfume that we found in a number of these wines, it's hard to find outside of Bourgogne. I'm surprised I love these wines. And I don't like them. I love them. As I had said previously, I'm looking for mouthfeel. And when you've got, you know, big-shouldered, quite tannic wines, it detracts from mouthfeel. I want to go to elegant, complex, etc., etc. But I can't argue with the quality of these wines. Yeah. So what did we do today? We had a tasting. One producer, and a very good producer from Bourgogne, same vintage, different appellations that we tasted blind. We're surprised, in a way, that across the board, lots of color. And across the board, a good amount of tannin. But there was surprising amount of perfume and balance and some elegance to go with that power. By and large, most of the wines improved in the glass. And there were some really delicious wines here. And it was fun. Yeah. I can't add much to that. It's been fun. The quality of the wines, it's unarguable. Amazing tasting. Thank you for finding all those. Thanks for our members. Members paid. Came out of my pocket, too. But they paid the majority of the tasting. Thank you. All right. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. Well, if there's anything I can tell you about it having come out of your pocket, it's that at least the wines were good. Yeah, because when it comes out of your pocket and the wines aren't good, that's painful. Well, thank you. Actually, that might not be true. When it comes out of your pockets and the wines aren't good, you have to scrape those and you take them back. Portland ran away with me and San Francisco stayed with me. Nashville made its way in between. Fell in love in Minnesota and fell apart south of Salt Lake. Colorado calls to me and Washington will always be begging for a piece of me to stay. Maybe some things never change, but I want to know how it feels to hang pictures on a wall, sleep in the same bed at night. I want reasons to stay. I want someone to take up my time.