I played some end-of-the-season golf with Blair, Peter and Tom back in October and of course we had some wines (both on the course and afterwards at Blair’s) to help us drown our sorrows over our inflated handicaps.
2000 Pierre Gimonnet Champagne Special Club 1er Cru Brut. The guys got started early with some breakfast wines, and there was plenty of this left over to drink out on the third hole or so. The nose is airy and clean, with scents of yellow tree fruit, minerals and flinty smoke. In the mouth, it is more dry and precise than full or rich, yet shows solid staying power and a fine lingering flavor profile of apple, citrus and mineral.
1999 Maurice Ecard Savigny-les-Beaune 1er Cru Les Narbantons. At the turn, Peter asked me to grab one of the bottles I was delivering to him out of my car to drink on the back nine. That was a great idea, as this is a very fine wine, no matter what sort of drinking vessel one might attempt to drink it out of! Obviously a pop and pour, the bouquet right off the bat is lovely and appealing with its character-laden notes of leather, cassis, earth and rusty iron nail. The flavor profile is delicious—featuring pretty much the same elements as on the nose. It displays firm body, medium weight and a well-balanced and clean finish. It is drinking just great right now (especially compared to the 2002, which is considerably more tannic and unyielding at this stage).
1989 Chateau Branaire Ducru St. Julien. Back at the house after our round, we had some lunch and a few more bottles of wine. This first wine kicks things off well with a stellar bouquet of sweet berry compote, leather, grilled pepper, graphite and tilled earth that is deeply luxuriant and sexy. In the mouth, it is largely a different story, though, where it comes across as cool and refined, with rather tart acidity, no tannin and flavors of mixed currants, tomato leaf, limestone and white pepper. There is also an unusual chemical streak running beneath everything that I find very distracting, so in the end I really enjoy this to sniff but am not real fond of it to drink.
2000 Podere Poggio Scalette Il Carbonaione Alta Valle della Greve IGT. There is an effusive bouquet here, along with a definite richness of aroma highlighted by baked cherry, plum, clay and baking spice scents. In the mouth, it is velvety and full, with a good deal of seamless black and red fruit and fleshy tannins that give the wine a certain juiciness and leave a lasting impression. It is a bit drier on the finish, but ought to have plenty of life left for the cellar.
2008 Hospices de Beaune Beaune 1er Cru Cuvee Brunet Benjamin Leroux. In the course of conducting some business with a local importer, I was offered a generous opportunity to try the following three bottles of wine that came from barrels he had purchased at the Hospices auction and had worked with Ben Leroux to finish. The first of these sports a very fragrant and immediate nose redolent of cracked peppercorns, dried meat, campfire ash and various leafy bits to go along with sweet red berry fruit, powdered sugar and crunchy cranberries galore. It shows a ton of vibrancy and life and just gets better and better over the course of the afternoon. In the mouth, it is pure and pretty, but with plenty of stuffing and excellent acidity. The fruit feels sappy on the tongue, and the fine spices and classy tannins already seem to be integrating pretty well. The finish shows obvious wood, but this is still a pleasure to drink right now and should find even surer footing down the road. It was my favorite of the three, for sure.
2008 Hospices de Beaune Pommard 1er Cru Cuvee Dom Goblet Benjamin Leroux. This bouquet is not nearly as pretty as the previous wine’s, though it does show just as much vigor. It trends more toward earthy notes of leather, bell pepper, sand and crunchy red berries. In the mouth, it is the most obviously tannic wine in the trio and is definitely on the dry side at this stage of its youth. It is cherry- and cranberry-fruited, with a tart and taut feel to the mid-palate. It demonstrates great freshness, flow and length, but needs 5-8 years or so to settle down, in my opinion.
2008 Hospices de Beaune Corton Grand Cru Cuvee Charlotte Dumay Benjamin Leroux. Like the Beaune, this wine is already sporting complex aromatics—in this case, sweet berries, cream, vanilla, confectionary cotton candy and toasty oak. In the mouth, it is obviously denser and more thickly-fruited than the other two wines, with more gravitas and structure to it. One can sense the evident stuffing lurking here, but it stays fairly tight, linear and toughly acidic today. This has all the makings of a very good wine, but some patience may be required.
-Michael