Dinner with the Wines of Savigny-lès-Beaune

I had some of the fellas over the other night to have dinner and drink red wine from Savigny-lès-Beaune. Why Savigny-lès-Beaune? Well, a top bottle (not counting Leroy's Narbontons) costs about $50, a good villages wine should be in the mid $30's. That's real money, but it's pretty cheap as far as Burgundy goes. I wanted to drink several examples of the best bottles to see if they are undervalued within the pantheon of Burgundy terroir, or if they are simply more of that overpriced but merely decent wine from Burgundy.

Any list of the best producers in Savigny would include Domaine Simon Bize, Domaine Jean-Marc et Hugues Pavelot, and Chandon de Briailles. Others include Maurice Écard, Camus-Bruchon, and Catherine et Claude Maréchal, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. There were 7 of us at dinner and although no one discussed what to bring in advance, we got a great mix of wines from great producers.

The shame of it is that nothing really showed all that well. I'm willing to bet it was a root day or a leaf day or something, because most of the wines didn't show much energy, their aromatics were subdued. Still, I learned a lot from this, particularly about the differences in terroir within Savigny-lès-Beaune.

If you take a look at this map from the Burgundy-Report site, you can see that a river runs east/west through Savigny-lès-Beaune. The vineyards to the north of the river typically have heavier soils that are rich with clay. They lie on hills with southern exposure. These can be rich, dense wines. The north-side vineyard with the best potential is probably Aux Vergelesses, a 1er Cru that borders the 1er Crus of Pernand Vergelesses. The other 1er Cru sites that reliably produce very good wines include Les Fournaux, Gravains, Lavières, Aux Guettes, and Serpentières.

South of the river the soils are sandier, more gravelly, and the exposure isn't as good. But it is from here that the appellation's most esteemed wines have traditionally come. The 1er Cru Dominode vineyard (always called "Les Jarrons" on vineyard maps) is said to make the finest wines of Savigny, although that might change as Patrick Bize's wines from Aux Vergelesses and Les Fournaux age and fully reveal themselves. Next to Dominode is Les Narbantons, a 1er Cru made famous by Lalou Bize at Domaine Leroy (but one can buy 3 or 4 bottles of Pavelot Dominode for the same price as one bottle of Leroy Narbantons).

We began with a couple of white wines and gougères, my first attempt at making the delicious cheese puffs that are so common in Burgundy. The 2007 Domaine Marcillet Savigny-lès-Beaune, $28, Savio Soares Selections, was a surprising wine. It's a humble villages wine that packs a lot of punch. I've had this wine on several occassions and liked it very much, but this time around I thought the oak was a bit too much. The others liked it a lot though, and 3 hours later the wine had indeed integrated beautifully, showing ripe fruit, minerals, and an earthy pungency that I associate with Savigny-lès-Beaune. Levi said that it might have been the wine of the night for him. I served this wine alongside the 2007 Chandon de Briailles Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Cru Aux Vergelesses, $48, Imported by David Bowler, which showed rather poorly. I liked the tropical aromas I was getting immediately after I opened the bottle, but no one really liked it a half hour later. My friend Clarke said that it had a vodka-type spirit essence to it, which was right on. It wasn't flawed, it was just weird.

Among the red wines, the first flight was my favorite of the night. We drank the 2007 Jean-Marc et Hugues Pavelot Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Cru La Dominode, $55, Becky Wasserman Selections, and the 2007 Simon Bize Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Cru Aux Vergelesses, $52, Becky Wasserman Selections, with a hearty mushroom barley soup. These are both delicious wines that are quite forward and approachable, perhaps a characteristic of the 2007 vintage. Drinking them next to each other was a great lesson in Savigny-lès-Beaune terroir. The Pavelot Dominode showed a definite layer of gravelly stone underneath the pure and spicy red fruits. It was much less dense than the richer Bize wine, although no less intense. I liked it very much - it was my favorite wine of the night. The only question for me was whether or not it will age well, as it just didn't seem to have any excess or unresolved structure. The Bize Aux Vergelesses showed a darker fruit character and a much earthier nose, like wet clay. It had a lovely perfume and although it was drinking very well, it never fully unraveled and I imagine that it will do very well with 7-10 years of cellaring.

We then drank two Simon Bize wines with braised beef and turnips. The 2006 Savigny-lès-Beaune Les Bourgeots, $35, and the 2006 Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er Cru Les Fournaux, $48. Les Bourgeots was aromatically closed, but showed pretty dark fruits on the palate and good balance. Les Fournaux had lovely floral and dark fruit aromatics, but was angular and awkward on the palate. These wines are probably starting to shut down. The next day I got to taste them again and they were both excellent. Bourgeots was a seamless expression of Savigny-lès-Beaune dark fruit and earth, completely pure and delicious, and drinking perfectly. Les Fournaux showed more depth and intensity of fruit, and still needed more time, although it was no longer awkward. Simon Bize's wines...very impressive.

I'm not going to go into much detail on the rest because none of them showed very well. Just a few notes-

Still with braised beef and turnips:
2004 Pavelot 1er Cru Les Gravains, $45. Some nice things here, good fruit, but the wine was surprisingly evolved, and showed what I found to be unpleasant seaweedy notes.
2001 Chandon de Briailles 1er Cru Les Lavieres, $45. A library release that, if what we drank is an accurate representation of the wine, should have stayed in the library. Just weird, with cloying fruit and lots of alcohol, completely disjointed and kind of swampy. Flawed? Not good wine? Who knows...

With cheeses, including a most incredibly runny Époisses:
1996 Pavelot 1er Cru La Dominode (magnum), $135. The only wine that provoked anything close to controversy, as some liked it more than others. I thought it was perfectly fine, but kind of anonymous and dull. It never really opened up, and I would be curious to know how it fared on day 2.
1990 Robert Ampeau Savigny-lès-Beaune, $40. Lots of fun to see what's going on with this bottle, a 20 year old villages wine from Savigny. But alas, it was pretty much dead on arrival. Yes, I know that you need to do a lot of aerating with Ampeau, and we swirled and swirled and opened it over an hour before drinking it, but all that was left was seaweed and rotting leaves.

How Long Should a Wine Age?

I've always been attracted to things that are defined by a concrete set of rules. What attracts me most is when, given a thorough understanding of the rules, it is possible to be creative in solving problems within that system. Chess, baseball, music, poker...these are some of the things I'm talking about.

Wine fits in here too. There are plenty of rules one can use in understanding the universe of wine - places, grape varieties allowed, methods of elevage, and so on. There are people out there, you've probably met them too, whose appreciation of wine seems to derive from an elevated level of scholarship - they treat it like a science. And that's fine. But there is loads of room for creativity too. How long a wine should age, for example - I've been thinking for a while now about this problem, and to me the answers involve creativity, not a set of rules.

I wish there were a set of rules to follow, some sort of list I could use to answer this question. But there just isn't. Imagine:

Vouvray sec - 8 years
Vouvray demi-sec - 14 years
Anything by Huet or Foreau - 23 years
And so on...

Obviously the vagaries of vintage quality, producer quality, terroir quality, vine age, wine making technique, and countless others make it impossible to make such a list.

Yet, you have, if not a list, something in your mind that guides your hand when making decisions about aging wine. How did you form your set of rules? I am still in the process of forming mine. I began by reading and talking to friends, and this definitely served me well. But I'm committed now to experimenting for myself, building my knowledge through trial and error and through the generosity of others. After all, my preferences might not be the same as yours, so just because you say that Fourrier's wines need at least 10 years in a typical vintage, shouldn't I try to find out for myself?

And take a step back for a moment - what does it even mean to say "needs at least 10 years?" Needs 10 years in order to be what, exactly? Ready to drink? Fully mature? Less tannic and in a better state of balance? I read statements like "needs at least 10 years" all the time, and it's not that I think that they're wrong, bad, or silly. But I read them and can accept them as truth, and yet I sometimes have no idea what they're referring to - I've never had a 10 year old Fourrier, for example.

How often do you drink old/mature wine? Unless you often buy at auction, or have been buying and cellaring wine for a very long time, you're probably like me - you drink scores of younger wines for every truly mature bottle you drink.

If I'm buying an age worthy wine, a good red Burgundy, for example, I'm a believer in buying three bottles and drinking one when young in order to know the wine in that phase of its life. That way I will better understand the changes when I next drink it, whenever that is. But when should that be? I remember asking my friend Peter about this as we drove from one cellar tasting to another in Burgundy a little over a year ago. He said "If you're talking about the top wines, good 1er Crus and Grand Crus, things like that, when in doubt, use the 12 year rule. Try a bottle in the 12th year out from the vintage - drink a 2002 in 2014, for example. It's unlikely that a really good wine would be tired or dead at that point, and there's a good chance that the wine will be drinking well."

Hmmm, the 12 year rule. I know I began by saying that the answer involves creativity, not rules. But Peter was suggesting 12 years as a guideline to use when in doubt, and he meant that the drinker should evaluate the wine at that point and determine whether or not it requires further time.

But what about good villages wines, does the 12 year rule apply to them as well? I asked him this recently and he said that the reasoning behind the 12 year rule is the fact that most good Burgundy wine can be quite drinkable in its youth but then a few years out from the vintage it shuts down and becomes quite closed. At 12 years, give or take, it emerges as a mature wine. With villages wine, it might not take 12 years. With great wine in a vintage like 2004, it might not require 12 years. In a high-acid vintage like 1999, it might take more than 12 years for a great wine to mellow and show at its best. So that one bottle of 1999 Lafarge Clos des Chênes I have, I'm going to give it a few years past 2011. In 2009 Peter and I drank a bottle of 1995 Mugneret-Gibourg Echezeaux and it was good, but the wine wasn't fully resolved - the structure was still too prominent, and we both felt that with a few more years it would have shown better. But in 2009 we also drank a bottle of 1995 Chandon de Briailles Corton Clos du Roi and it was a thing of beauty, in a perfect place. Again, even when trying to apply the 12 year rule, the answers require creativity.

Last week in San Diego I had the chance, thanks to the generosity of my father-in-law, to drink a few old wines and I learned a tremendous amount from them. I already told you about the 1986 Margaux, but on another night we drank a 1988 Château Léoville Las Cases and it was superb, I preferred it to the Margaux. It was full of tobacco and leather, the only fruit really was a bit of dark cassis on the finish. There was a tactile texture to the wine and the acidity was still vibrant - the wine was nowhere near tired, it was very much fresh and alive. If I had more of this I would drink it now, it's delicious and what would I be waiting for? So my new rule - good Bordeaux needs exactly 22 years. A joke, friends, a joke. But really, I learned that good old Bordeaux is really good wine, and perhaps it isn't made the same way it was in the '80's and before that, but it's too easy to write off Bordeaux as spoof-city over-priced silliness. My guess is that it once was a great thing.

And how about this - on our last night we drank a 1977 Ruffino Chianti Classico Riserva Ducale. Pop-pop brought this wine back from Italy a long time ago. I know nothing about Chianti, and my association with Ruffino wasn't great. But I loved this wine, loved it. So leathery and earthy, but with lots of sour cherry too, and all of the aromas and flavors were crystal clear. There was still structure too, and good acidity. And the finish was glorious, this unending wash of cherry and leather fragrance. So, what would happen if I aged a bottle of the 2007 Pian del Ciampolo for 33 years? My guess is it would be awesome. Or maybe it would be tired and brown. Who knows.

I hope I have the patience to cellar wines for decades like this. The rewards can be so great.

Open Something Good Before Leaving

I'm traveling for work this week. I have this superstition that compels me to open a really good bottle of wine the night before I leave, something special to share with BrooklynLady. On Sunday night we at a version of Osso Bucco, ours braised with fennel, carrots, and orange peel. We opened a bottle of wine that I had planned on cellaring for many years, the 2006 Domaine de L'Arlot Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru Clos des Forêts St. Georges, $55-85, Daniel Johnnes Selections/Michael Skurnik Wines.

Last year at about this time I visited Domaine de L'Arlot, stayed at the estate in Prémeaux-Prissey actually. I was very much impressed with the wines - very pure and full of character and complexity. The Clos des Forêts St. Georges is a monopole of the domaine, and sits next to the famous Les Saint-Georges, the great vineyard in Nuits St. Georges that is considered by many to be of true Grand Cru quality. Domaine de L'Arlot's Clos des Forêts St. Georges can be similar to the wines of Les Saint-Georges, showing a dark fruited muscularity, a sauvage pungency. I'm a recent but adoring fan.

Although this wine will clearly repay a decade and more in the cellar, it was utterly delicious on Sunday evening. The oak is quite prominent on the nose, but the true character shines through. Deeply and darkly fruited, firmly structured, and with an inner cylinder of pungent animal perfume that emerges on the midpalate and gently pushes through the finish. Really a beautiful wine, a lot of character. And I'm confident that the oak will integrate with time.

And then guess what happened...maybe 30 minutes in, while still putting the finishing touches on dinner, I poured another splash from the decanter and I noticed that the wine smelled corky, ever so faintly, but corky. Was it just that one whiff, was it a pungent note that resembled TCA? We sat down to eat 15 minutes later, I poured us each a glass, and there was no mistaking it - the wine was corked. Not savagely so, but corked indeed, and the aromatics had been overwhelmed. Isn't that wild? The TCA didn't show itself until the wine had spent about 30 minutes in a decanter. It was gorgeous before that point.

We opened a bottle of 2006 Chandon de Briailles Pernand Vergelesses 1er Cru Ile des Vergelesses, $43, David Bowler Wines, instead, another wine I had planned on cellaring. It was lovely, more subtle and subdued, its stems more apparent. We both agreed that this wine, as lovely as it was, was difficult to drink after the first half hour of that beautiful Clos des Forêts St. Georges. Oh TCA, how I despise you, let me count the ways.

Lest you think this corked wine somehow jinxed my trip, that's not the case. Everything is going fine so far. And when I get home I'll open something nice with BrooklynLady.

Convoluted Thoughts on Cellaring Wine

You know what I realized the other day? I have never purchased a bottle of wine, cellared it for long enough so that one would consider it "ready" to drink, and then drunk the wine. I simply haven't been collecting wine long enough. The mature wine I drink is purchased way after release, or comes to me via generous friends, over meals we share.

I recently drank a glorious bottle of 1995 Chandon de Briailles Corton-Clos du Roi, a bottle I purchased in December of 2008 while in Beaune. Let's see, by the summer of 1995 I had been out of college for two years. I spent the first year waiting tables at a French restaurant in Manhattan, and the second year as a middle school science teacher at a South Bronx public school. I wasn't buying Grand Cru Burgundy on my pathetic teacher's salary. I never tasted this wine young, and then decided that I would age it about 14 years before drinking the next bottle. I bought it and hoped for the best, and this time, that's exactly what I got.

In the first half of 2009, I drank a bunch of Muscadet and decided to age Marc Ollivier's 2007 Clos des Briords and Jo Landron's 2007 Fief du Breil, and the 2002 Luneau Papin Clos des Noelles Excelsior. I'm hoping to wait 10 years before trying the next bottles. I made the decision to cellar those bottles because I drank them, and other Muscadets, and given my constraints regarding space and money, I felt that these would be the most rewarding to cellar. With wines that cost $16-$22, I can afford to drink them young and figure out for myself what I want to do.

The other day I purchased a bottle of 2006 Chandon de Briailles Corton-Maréchaudes on sale for $66. That's well into splurge territory for me, something that happens infrequently. And I have never tasted this wine, nor have I tasted any wine from Maréchaudes, not that I can remember. But I bought it with complete confidence based on the producer, and on the larger place - Corton. I assumed when buying it that I would cellar it for about 12 years.

Is that weird, to invest 12 years in a wine that I've never before tasted? Maybe not. I've had several mature Corton wines, and they develop beautiful complexity with time. Why would this wine from this fantastic and old-school producer be any different? After all, I just drank the 1995 a few weeks ago and it was utterly gorgeous, with fresh ripe fruit that crackled with minerals, and a pungently animale undercurrent. I want my 2006 to become like that wine, the 1995. If I wait 12 years that will surely be the case, no? I wish I could afford to drink this young, to get a better sense of its potential.

I tend to jump on the "cellar-your-wine" bandwagon, blindly assuming that my splurge wines must improve if I cellar them. And hopefully they will, but who knows what will happen when the cork is eventually pulled - not every wine that is supposed to age well actually does. Some people say that we fetish-ize the aging of wine, and that the point is lost somewhere - we do it just for the sake of doing it, without any real sense of what we're trying to achieve.

At a recent industry tasting I had the chance to taste the 2006 Chandon de Briailles Corton-Bressandes. It was unmistakably and immutably delicious, even at this crowded and loud event where it is not possible to really understand a wine. It is all about fruit at this stage, but it is elegant and deeply pitched, with a dense and concentrated feeling yet not at all heavy. Surprisingly, the harsh young tannic structure that I expected was not present. I would quite happily drink this wine now, and some people would say I'd be committing a crime in doing so. Perhaps they're right - perhaps the full character of this great wine needs a decade plus in a cold cellar in order to express itself.

But isn't a bird in hand worth two in the bush? In this particular case, I know what I'm trying to achieve by cellaring my 2006 Maréchaudes. But since I never drank the 1995 young (or any of the other Corton I've been lucky enough to drink), I don't have a sense of what the beginning should be like. In other words, I know what the end should be like, but I'm not sure about the beginning. And now that I am ready to create my own beginnings, I'm not on entirely steady ground.

Going on a Little Trip

I'm taking a little vacation from the blog this week - I'm traveling on the west coast for business. Just a couple of quick things to say before I go:

--I have a small article published in the Fall issue of Wine & Spirits magazine, called 48 Hours in New York City. It's basically a vehicle for aging stars Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, bringing their outrageously mismatched partnership from San Fran to fight crime in NYC. Anyway, I am obviously rather proud to have written something that appears in an important wine magazine. An I can tell, you're proud of me too - thanks.

--I tried my hand at salt-cured Bonito this weekend, using this recipe. Needless to say, my version did not look as enticing. Mine was too salty too - I'm using less salt and less curing time on my next try. The author recommends 3-4 days. I went with 8 hours and it was too much.

--I can now tell you that after drinking the top Bandol rosés this summer, Tempier's is the best in 2008, and it's not even close in the end. That wine simply has everything - fruit, texture, complexity, vibrancy and punch, but true grace. Beautiful wine, one that I want more of, quickly.

--I recently had the occasion to open a great bottle of mature red Burgundy wine, the 1995 Domaine Chandon de Briailles Corton Clos du Roi. Truly a delicious and wonderful wine. Just listen to what BrooklynLady had to say while drinking this: "Wow, this wine is making me SO happy," and then she said "Honey, I could drink this every day. Can you make that happen for me? Do we have any more of this?" I had to explain to her that although we have no more of this wine, we have other great bottles that in about 10 years might be as rewarding. And we have a few things we can open sooner that might be in the same league. She looked somewhat crestfallen. What can I tell you? Should I have lied to the poor woman?

--As much fun as it is to travel, I HATE being away from my wife and kids.

See you in about a week.

Inexpensive but Totally Cellar Worthy

Make your morning coffee at home - why pay almost 3 bucks for it each day? Bring your lunch to work - why pay almost 10 bucks for it every day? There are many little ways to reduce spending. It feels reassuring to do these things now that common wisdom says most of us in the US have been living way beyond our means, the economy isn't nearly as bad as it's going to get, and it's now about holding onto our jobs as opposed to getting a raise.

Be that as it may, are we supposed to give up entirely on building our modest wine cellars? I can cut down on buying new shoes and underwear, but no fine wine for the cellar - that would be an undo hardship. Now is a good time, though, to be more selective about what to buy, and value is king.

With that in mind, here are three wines that will be amazing down the road, and that in my opinion offer great value. And these are wines that you can find on retail shelves without too much difficulty. I have four each of these babies, the most I buy of any one wine due to space and $ constraints. That's how much I like 'em.

2006 Chandon de Briailles Pernand-Vergelesses 1er Cru Les Vergelesses, $38, David Bowler Wine. $38 is not cheap for a bottle of wine, I know, but this is an amazing value. This will act like a much more expensive wine if you let it rest for 8-12 years. Pernand-Vergelesses is a lovely little village on the west side of the big hill of Corton, the promontory on whose slopes are found the Grand Cru vineyards that produce grapes for the wines of Corton Charlemagne, Clos du Roi, Bressandes, and others. Pernand-Vergelesses and Savigny-Les-Beaune, its neighbor to the south, are the two villages in the Côte de Beaune that I look to for great values in red wine. There are a couple of vineyards in particular that seem to spawn really good wines year in-year out, and Les Vergelesses is one of them, and Chandon de Briailles is one of the top producers working there.

Even though this wine is completely wrapped up in structure, the perfume is deep purple and very clean. The purity and the richness of fruit is obvious, and it rests on a nimble and spare frame. The acidity is gentle and there is a current of iron minerals running underneath everything. It's so good now, like dipping your finger in the bowl of icing - better to wait for the whole cake, but undeniably yummy.

2005 Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Grezeaux, $23, Louis/Dressner Selections. If you live in the NYC area you'll probably have to order this from North Carolina, but with shipping and a mixed case discount you're still talking about under $25. And that's just silliness for a wine of this quality and longevity. The structure on this one is quite a thick layer right now, but the fruit is dark, ripe, and juicy. There are little glimpses of the secondary goodness to come - wafts of tobacco and moss. Great acidity, very lively wine, this one is a killer. And it will be drinking great when my daughter is done with college. And this is not even the top wine from the Baudry estate. How good is that wine, the 2005 La Croix Boisée? I haven't tasted mine yet, have you?

2004 Produttori del Barbaresco, $29, Vias Imports. I'm really not the guy to talk to about Produttori del Barbaresco. That would be Dr. Parzen. I'm a Barbaresco neophyte. But on Produttori I'm totally convinced. I can't afford to start learning about Barolo now, so this is going to have to do. The 2004 is absolutely delicious at this very moment, but so clearly will sleep happily for 20 years or more - there is a robe of structure and a bright and lovely core. When it integrates, I want to be there. Right now we're talking about clean cherries, tar, flowers, and leather on the nose. The tannins are pretty fierce right now, but the ripeness and balance, the juicy acidity on the palate is undeniable.