The Burgundy that I Buy Every Year

My oldest daughter was born almost six years ago. When my then-wife was approaching the end of the second trimester of her pregnancy, we decided to take a trip to France, to Burgundy. Before leaving I asked David Lillie at Chambers Street if he could recommend any producers we should visit. He generously set us up with Jeanne-Marie de Champs, a Burdgundian who has been in the wine trade for quite some time. She took us to visit several producers, one of whom was Jean Lafouge.

We were completely charmed by the Lafouge visit. Everything was right - Jean and his son Gilles, the relaxed way they welcomed us to their work and their wines, the cellars, the house, the way they kept making sure my pregnant wife had water, did she want a chair, did she need more air, something to eat?

The wines happened to smell and taste very good also. My daughter had been in her mommy's tummy for about 6 months at that point. I like to think that she also tasted those wines, the lovely whites from Auxey-Duresses, the properly oily and nutty Meursaults, the pure and complex reds from Auxey-Duresses and Pommard. She tasted other wines on that trip too, but something about the Lafouges and their wines - for me it just stuck. 

I resolved to include Lafouge wine in the little collection of 2007 birth-year wines I would amass for my daughter. True, Auxey-Duresses is not the most illustrious Burgundy terroir, but it is not the only wine I've saved for her. And some wines you save because they are great wines, others you save because they have a special meaning. Lafouge Auxey-Duresses 1er Cru La Chapelle is an excellent Auxey-Duresses that for me has special meaning. I like the other wines by Lafouge too, the reds are all good, and the Meursault is actually among the best values that I know of in white Burgundy. But La Chapelle for whatever reason is the one I put in the cellar. In fact, it's the only Burgundy wine that I buy each and every year. I buy Burgundy differently now, getting far fewer bottles of higher quality. But I always get a few bottles of Lafouge La Chapelle. My younger daughter has a birth-year bottle of La Chapelle waiting for her too.

I just picked up the 2010's, a vintage of low yields and supposedly excellent quality. These, like most La Chapelle I own, are not birth-year bottles, and I have no idea when and how I will enjoy them. I'm excited...

Birth Year Wines

I've been thinking a little bit about birth year wines lately. I'm going to be 40 years old not too long from now (absurd, as I still like to think of myself as a 27 year old) and I hope to find a special bottle from 1971 to share with friends on my birthday. 1971 was a good vintage in Burgundy and also in Piedmonte, so it shouldn't be too hard to find something interesting and delicious.

What do you do, though, if your birth year was a bad vintage? It's fun to drink birth year wine, and I think it's worth trying to find something anyway. But it's not so easy to find a bottle of wine that's in good condition after 35 years, even from a good vintage. An off vintage makes it that much more challenging to find something delicious and expressive, not merely a wine with the correct vintage number on the label.

A good friend had a birthday recently, and later this month he will very generously share a bottle of wine from his birth year with me. His birth year is 1973, not a great vintage in most places. But he knows enough about wine so that his search was very specifically directed, and he found something from the Loire Valley that should be fantastic - I'll let you know how it goes in a few weeks.

I've been having a lot of fun thinking about and slowly accumulating birth year wine for my daughters. They are 23 months apart in age, born in 2007 and 2008. I want to save wines for them that are meaningful to me in some way, and also wines that are great wines, wines that should be beautiful and moving in 16 or more years. Here's what I have for them so far:

Older daughter - 2007:

Domaine Jean et Gilles Lafouge Auxey-Duresses 1er Cru La Chapelle, $27, Imported by Fruit of the Vines. BrooklynLady and I visited the Lafouges in 2006 when she was 7 months pregnant with our daughter. Okay, it's not Roumier or Lafarge, but I'd say that it's more meaningful. The daughter was there in the Lafouge cellars, inside her mommy's belly, when her mommy tasted this very wine (and spat, thank you very much). Middling vintages can sometimes be surprising, by the way. I recently had a 1995 La Chapelle and it was fantastic.

Domaine Michel Lafarge Volnay 1er Cru Clos des Chênes, $120, Becky Wasserman Selections. For our 1st anniversary dinner, BrooklynLady came home with a bottle of 2001 Lafarge Volnay. So this producer is meaningful too. And it's Lafarge Clos des Chênes, it should be darn good when she's old enough to drink it.

I've had a harder time with the whites. I've chosen wines that I think should age well. I'm waiting for vintage Champagne to be released, as 2007 is supposed to be a pretty good year. So far I've saved these white wines:

Domaine Huët Vouvray Sec Clos du Bourg, $29, Robert Chadderdon Imports. BrooklynLady and I love Loire Valley white wines, particularly Huët - who doesn't? This one should be great when she gets home from her prom.

Pierre Gonon St. Joseph Blanc Les Oliviers, $32, Imported by Fruit of the Vines. A weird one, in a way. A white wine from the Rhône Valley - do they age well? A lot of the time, no, but I think this one will. It's so intense and well balanced. We'll see what happens...

Gilbert Picq Chablis 1er Cru Vogros, $29, Polaner Imports. I love Picq's wines, I think they were great in 2007, and Vogros is their old vines 1er Cru that ages very well. I have high hopes for this one.

I would have saved something by Paul Pernot, who we also visited on that same trip, but his wines weren't supposed to be so great in 2007.

If you have more than one kid you'll know what I mean when I say this - the second child often gets the short end of the stick. I have hours of video of my first daughter. My second - perhaps 45 minutes. It's terrible. And so far, I have only one wine for her. I'll find more, but the 2008 Burgundies haven't really been released yet in NYC, never mind things like vintage Champagne. So far from 2008 I have:

Domaine Huët Vouvray Sec Clos du Bourg, $29, Robert Chadderdon Imports. There is going to be some overlap here. Younger daughter gets Huët Clos de Bourg too. And she could do a whole lot worse.

I was in Burgundy when BrooklynLady was pregnant with our second daughter, but I didn't go back to Lafouge. I visited Dujac, Roumier, Mugnier, Pierre Morey, Arlot, Rousseau, Pacalet, Le Moine, and Des Croix. 2nd daughter will definitely get something interesting from one or more of these producers.

Have I missed something? Was 2007 or 2008 fantastic somewhere and I should save the wine? What do you think about all of this birth year wine stuff. Please, share your thoughts.

Dinner and a Food Tasting

A good friend came over the other night and brought our dinner with him, a bottle of 1995 Lafouge Auxey-Duresses 1er Cru La Chapelle, price unknown, USA Wine Imports. I have a soft spot for the wines of Jean and Gilles Lafouge. BrooklynLady and I visited the estate back in 2006 when she was pregnant with our first child. The wines are expressive and true, and affordable. And I had never had a mature bottle, so this was a real treat.

With a dinner like this there is no pairing that is exactly perfect, and there are few things that are utterly terrible. Okay, very spicy food, something with lots of stewed tomato, the most delicate consommé, these things probably wouldn't have worked with our dinner. But within reasonable parameters it would be hard to mess this up entirely.

I decided to prepare a tasting that would accompany our dinner, a plate of little things for us to experiment with and see what worked best with the '95 La Chapelle. I boiled and sliced some fresh red beets and drizzled on them a bit of sauce made by whisking soft goat cheese, olive oil, and vinegar. I roasted some shitake mushrooms in nothing but butter and salt. I sauteed escarole with anchovies, and I hard boiled an egg just to the point where the yolk was set, but not cooked through. I was hoping to offer savory, sweet, mineral, tangy, earthy, and bitter flavors on the same plate.

Dinner was fantastic. The nose was all about underbrush and savory aromas, still energetic and appealing. My friend detected floral notes too. Although it was gone from the nose, the palate still had plenty of soft stewed fruit. The palate was vibrant and expressive and sang out in that lovely mature wine tone. Very vibrant and fresh with good acidity even though the structure was almost resolved. As delicious as this wine is, I imagine that it is still a few years from absolute peak, which I am finding to be true about each of the few 1995 wines I've had in the past year.

It was fascinating to taste these different foods with our dinner. Without any doubt, the roast mushrooms were the best pairing. They were in perfect stride with the savory underbrush notes in the wine. I also enjoyed the way the tangy and sweet beet dish paired. The egg was fine, neither here nor there. The only thing in our tasting that didn't work very well with dinner was the escarole. I might have used too much anchovy, or perhaps the bitter, salty, umami-ness of that dish was simply too pungent for our gentle old dinner to successfully collaborate with.

Note to self - cellar some La Chapelle. And eat more roast mushrooms with mature Pinot.

By the Glass - Burgundy Complaints Edition

It is almost cliché to say that Burgundy is a crap shoot, every bottle a roll of the dice. But that's because it's true. Price and quality can have a rather distant relationship, and there can be great variations in climate just within one village. Which part of Volnay was hit by hail in 2001? Better check on that before spending $75 on a Lafarge Clos du Château des Ducs. Was it northern or southern Vosne-Romanée that got heavy rain and then a lot of rot in 2006? Best to find out before spending your $80 on Hudelot-Noëllat's Malconsorts - maybe Les Suchots should be better.

If you're into Burgundy, you know I'm not kidding or exaggerating. Malconsorts and Suchots are within a stone's throw of one another (if a major league ball player were throwing the stone), but they will always produce different wines - and that's a terroir issue. I'm talking about weather problems like hail or heavy rain or some other climatic stress, when a producer makes adjustments in the vineyards and sometimes in the cellar, and makes the best wines they can. But when the best they can is merely decent or average wine, (or very good wine that you got a bad bottle of), it's still Lafarge Clos du Château des Ducs or Hudelot-Noëllat Les Suchots, and it still costs $75.

For folks like me who buy two or three bottles per year at that price, it's a matter of risk reduction. I choose solid producers, and then wines from vineyards that interest me and that are not mentioned in bad weather reports. I do exactly the same thing when buying Burgundy wine in the $20-40 zone, the range that I tend to live in. And it's just as much of a guessing game in the end. Lauded vintages don't always translate to great wines, and so on.

Why do I keep doing it, although I feel like I "waste" more money on Burgundy that I do anywhere else? Because I fell so hard for the exquisite wines I've drank, that I continue to chase that feeling. And you never know where you'll find that feeling - a $25 bottle of Bourgogne can be exquisite.

Here are some wines that I've had recently at home with meals, some disappointing, others surprisingly good. I'll list them in descending order by price, and you'll see how frustrating the whole thing can be:

2001 Philippe Pacalet Pommard, $45. I bought two bottles because I served this wine to friends during their birthday dinner. On that night it seemed a bit tired and lifeless. We didn't need the 2nd bottle that evening, and opened it a month later without expectations. It was absolutely delicious - zesty and fresh with beautifully clean fruit, and with almost completely resolved tannins that made the whole thing feel luxurious and soft. But I spent $90 on these two bottles, and only one of them was worth it.

2004 Hudelot-Noëllat Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Beaux Monts, $43. When we opened it it seemed like it was going to be utterly gorgeous, an explosion of vibrant dark fruit and earthy spice. But it was all downhill from there with a dilute mid-palate, and after two hours open it was marred by a distinct ashtray type of smell that rendered it essentially undrinkable to me. This wine suffered from a case of under-ripe tannins, and no amount of cellaring can fix that. By the way, my friend whose house I brought this wine to really liked it, and he has a great palate, so what do I know.

2002 Domaine René Engel Vosne-Romanée, $28. Yes, laugh with me at that price. It's essentially impossible to find any village Vosne wine these days for under $40. 2002 is supposed to be such a great year, and this is a good producer (although that reputation grew under a different wine maker). Pleasant dark fruit and soil aromas, a bit of volatile acidity that blows off quickly, some underbrush shows with air. Pleasant and tasty wine, but not complex, and the simplicity becomes a distraction for me. For whatever it's worth, I'm not sure that there is much of a Vosne stamp either.

2005 Lafouge Auxey-Duresses 1er Cru Les Duresses, $27. I liked this wine when it was first released and full of dried leaves. Now the fruit is more prominent, and it's even better. There is still underbrush and some lovely spice too. Great wine, and makes me excited for the other 1er Crus from Lafouge that are sleeping in my cellar.

2005 Domaine des Croix Bourgogne, $25. I loved this wine when I drank it a year ago, but this time it was dominated by wood. And I wonder, can this much wood really integrate? Some would say it can, but I am reminded of something that Jeremy Seysses of Domaine Dujac said in December when leading us through his 2007's in barrel - he thinks that ripe vintages do not take to wood as well as other vintages, that the oak integrates better in the long term in a vintage like 2006 over 2005. If I'm misrepresenting what he said, hopefully Peter or Tista will read this and correct me.

2005 Catherine et Claude Maréchal Bourgogne Cuvée Gravel, $25. I am a fan of this producer, but this wine was simply too ripe. It came across as sweet and out of balance, with awfully prominent alcohol considering the 13% on the label. The 2007 is beautiful and balanced, a wine of grace and interest, and it's the same price.

2005 René LeClerc Bourgogne, $25. Needs a decant or just time for the carbon dioxide to find its way out of the wine. Very pure and good intensity of fruit, and shows an orange zest earthiness that for me is very Gevrey-Chambertin. A very lovely wine. Why is this 2005 Bourgogne lovely and the above two not as lovely, my personal taste aside? Leclerc's Bourgogne vines are in Gevrey somewhere, and perhaps they experienced more favorable climate than the Savigny-based vines of Maréchal or the Beaune and Pommard based vines of Des Croix.

2006 René LeClerc Bourgogne, $19. Drinkable, but not a successful wine. The aromatic profile is heavy with underbrush, and the fruit never really asserts itself. The palate is light bodied and rustic - a bit muddy almost.

2004 Dureuil-Janthial Rully Maizières, $18. 2004 was a difficult vintage for reds that deservedly has a mediocre reputation, and although the region's wines have been improving, the Côte Chalonnaise as a whole is not particularly distinguished terroir. I took a shot on this wine because the producer is one of the best in the Côte Chalonnaise, and because the price seemed reasonable. And it of course defied all expectations and was completely delicious with bright fruit, nice acidity, a bit of earthiness, and fully resolved tannins. Had I only known, I would have bought two bottles instead of the Hudelot-Noëllat and still saved a couple of bucks.

If you can truly figure out this whole Burgundy thing, then more power to you.

2004 Lafouge Auxey-Duresses 1er Cru Les Duresses

The quest continues - to identify and share high quality value-priced Pinot. I will admit that I have a serious soft spot for Domaine Jean et Gilles Lafouge, as BrooklynLady and I had such a wonderful visit during our Burgundy trip last November. Soft spot or no, they make very good wine, sometimes excellent wine, and always at reasonable prices.

We agreed previously that $25 would be the cutoff for value-priced Pinot, and that is tough my friends, tough. There just isn't that much out there to recommend at that price point. Well, if you can find it (and if you live in the NYC area, go to Chambers Street Wines - they have it), the 2004 Domaine Jean et Gilles Lafouge Auxey-Duresses 1er Cru Les Duresses is a very good wine and it clocks in at exactly $25. I bet it's less out of NYC too, so those of you who do not suffer the weight of NYC pricing - knock yourselves out.

Auxey-Duresses is a village in the Cote de Beaune, a neighbor of Meursault, Monthelie, and Saint Aubin. There are only a few 1er Cru vineyards in Auxey-Duresses, Les Duresses and Bas du Duresses are the two at the southern most part of the appellation. A lot of people think Auxey-Duresses is under rated as a Burgundy village, that it is too much in the shadow of the big three (Meursault, Puligny and Chassagne). I am not expert enough to weigh in on that one, but I can say that I have tasted several examples of white and red wines from the village and I like them in general. As always, the producer is more important than the classification of the wine (Bourgogne, 1er Cru, etc). And Lafouge is one of my favorites. The 2005 Lafouge wines are hitting retail now, or very soon, so it might be a good time to grab whatever is left of the 2004 bottles. The new wines might not be as inexpensive - you know, slap a "2005" on the bottle and everyone seems to go nuts.

2004 Domaine Jean et Gilles Lafouge Auxey-Duresses 1er Cru Les Duresses, $25.
Crystal clear ruby, very pretty color. High toned aromas of cranberry and sour cherry, some earth. A little cedar on the palate at first, but that dissipates quickly. Flavors of cranberry and sweet red berries, some pine, and a nice acidity, kind of like apple skins. A light-medium bodied wine, this is not in any way muscle-bound, and not an elegant and velvet wine either. It is somewhat in between, and this is probably representative of Auxey-Duresses terroir. That's why the wines don't command the same respect as do those from Pommard or Volnay, two higher profile (for reds) Cote de Beaune appellations. In an unspectacular vintage like 2004, the wines can seem hollow in the mid palate. This wine never felt hollow - Lafouge is too skilled for that, but it doesn't have the substance of Lafouge's 2004 Pommards, for example. It is a very good Pinot in the lighter style, and at $25, it is certainly worth the money. Make sure to enjoy it with food though, the flavors come alive and the acidity works better while eating.

Tasting at Domaine Jean et Gilles Lafouge

BrooklynLady and I continued our white Burgundy education at Domaine Lafouge. We were guided by Jeanne Marie's assistant Pierre-Henri, a gentlemanly young fellow. I followed him to Auxey-Duresses in our tiny car, and he gave us the wonderful gift of driving through a maze of back roads, past famous vineyards and old picture-book houses, the morning sun's rays poking through the fog. I almost drove off the road a few times while gawking at the astonishingly gorgeous scenery.

I just used a couple of "pumped up" adjectives: astonishing and gorgeous...and I want to take this moment to tell you that I truly mean them, and that in fact there are no words to explain the sensory experience of those back roads.

We were greeted at the Domaine by the elder statesman Jean Lafouge. I think that he may have raided Paul Pernots closet when dressing for work: he had a worn pageboy cap, a blue wool sweater with another sweater, a cardigan, over the first one, and canvas workpants with a few muddy stains. He says that he now merely consults in the winemaking, and that his son Gilles really makes the wine, so maybe those stains are from years past.

I will say that Jean Lafouge was the most charming man, the most friendly and open, the most relaxed of the vignerons we visited. He graciously helped my pregnant wife at every opportunity, placing the spit bucket close to her, offering her water, generally making sure she was comfortable. His son Gilles appeared for a moment and he was charming too (and seems to have diverged from the winemaker's costume).

Jean Lafouge is a 5th generation vigneron, and his pride and respect was evident for his son as the up-and-coming sixth generation of Lafouges to make wine in Auxey-Duresses.

Here are the wines we tasted, with a few notes (05s from barrel, 04s from bottle):

Whites: (right: Jean Lafouge drawing wine from a tank for tasting)

2005 Auxey-Duresses. Big nose of vanilla and toast, full fruity palate with lots of baby fat.

2005 Meursault. Tough to coax a lot from the nose - very reserved. Prominent minerals on the palate. I had no idea about the true character of this wine. Jean Lafouge told us after tasting it that the wine was completely closed up that day (from recent racking?).

2004 Auxey-Duresses. More balanced than the 2005, with a more focused palate of fruit and toast. Still, maybe not my favorite style of white Burgundy - very big and full bodied.

2004 Meursault. Clean citrus smells, some nuttiness, some flowers. Lemons, sweet but refined fruit and nice minerality. This wine had a lithe and skinny structure to it, very elegant. Clearly the best of the bunch right now.

(above: barrels of sleeping wine in the Lafouge cave)

Reds:

2005 Auxey-Duresses. Lean red fruit smell, apple peel acidity and cranberries dominant. All high notes, nothing grounding this wine in the way of earthiness.

2004 Auxey-Duresses. A bit more developed in the nose, but very reserved fruit. This wine had a crushed aspirin like flavor that reminded me of the Ladoix wine we had at La Terrace de Corton, and did not enjoy. I think I learned that Auxey-Duresses is not my favorite village in Burgundy.

2005 Pommard Les Noizons. I like the smells here, there are doark flowers and sappy dark fruit. Kind of gawky palate though, still very young. Seems to have a nice balance of fruit, spice, tannin, and acidity - seems very promising indeed.

2004 Pommard Les Noizons. Great floral aromas, and some red cherries. Finesse, feminine red fruit style, silky texture, very compelling.

We decided based on the quality of the two Pommards, and the lovely feeling we enjoyed while visiting the Domaine Lafouge, that we would order a magnum or two of the 2007 vintage wine to keep for our child, who will be born in early 07.