2005 Vintage Assessment and Oxidation Check Dinner No. 3 @ Melisse February 27, 2013

10 top-rated Montrachets and the Coche big three from the 2005 vintage

On Wednesday February 27, 2013 ten of us gathered at Melisse Restaurant in Santa Monica California for the third and final night of my annual white burgundy vintage assessment and oxidation check dinners. This year, in the eighth iteration of this dinner series, we are tasting the 2005 vintage. The final dinner, which is usually a celebration is called the “Mostly Montrachet” dinner. Befitting the name, we tasted 10 different 2005 Montrachets (one in two different formats) and the big three from Coche-Dury (Corton Charlemagne, Meursault Perrieres and Meursault Genevrieres).

The first installment of the 2005 vintage dinners was held at Spago in Beverly Hills on Tuesday February 5, 2013, where we drank 26 top-rated Chablis, Meursault and Corton Charlemagne. You’ll find my notes here. 2005 Vintage Assessment and Premox Check Dinner No. 1-Feb 5, 2013 at Spago Beverly Hills - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers The second event, which was held on Wednesday February 20, 2013 at Valentino in Santa Monica, covered 25 grand crus from Batard, Bienvenues Batard, Criots Batard and Chevalier Montrachet. You’ll find those notes here: 2005 White Burgundy Vintage Assessment and Oxidation Check Dinner No 2 @ Valentino February 20, 2013 - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers

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The Private Room at Melisse Awaiting Our Arrival
This photo and the ones below were taken by Andrew Gavin, one of the attendees. Andy has several more photographs of the event on his own blog site, All Things Andy Gavin: Mostly Montrachet at Melisse :: All Things Andy Gavin

Melisse is one of California’s Michelin Two Star restaurants and with good cause. For many of us it is the best restaurant in Southern California. Chef de Cuisine Ken Takayama always tries some new dishes for this event and manages to come up with some dazzling ones. Although I was disappointed with the second course, overall, the food was exceptional - especially the various appetizers and the Roasted Jidori Chicken served with the Coche –Dury wines. Sommelier Brian Kalliel again proved why he’s considered one of the top sommeliers on the West Coast orchestrating everything with in a marvelously efficient manner.

Appetizer Course
Lobster Bolognese
Blue Fin (Toro) Tuna, Chrysanthemum, Pistachio and Black Mustard
Liberty Duck Breast, Turnip and Marche Cherries

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The Blue Fin Toro was really amazing

1988 Alain Robert Les Mesnil Blanc de Blanc Tete de Cuvee Reserve Champagne (en magnum)
Light gold color; citrus and peach and a touch of melba toast in the aromas; fairly intense citrus, citrus zest and minerals on the mid palate (this champagne is not shy – it grabs you); citrus zest and a lot of minerality on the finish. I’d like this even more if the citrus zest wasn’t just a touch to the bitter side. 94

Flight One-Montrachet (served single blind except for wine #6)

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True Day Boat Scallop with Camelina Seeds, Celeriac and Meyer Lemon

#1 [2005 Bouchard Montrachet]
Light-plus gold color; key lime and white flowers aromas; on the palate, it has pear and light citrus flavors with modest acidity; the best feature is a particularly long minerally finish with just a touch of citrus fruit. This is clearly less dense than some of the others, but it is elegant and it’s not advanced or oxidized (on this night a rarity among the Montrachets.) My fifth-ranked wine of the night. Group Rank: 5th, 5 pts – (0/0/0/0/5) 94

#2 [2005 Marc Colin Montrachet]
Light gold color; some reduction aromas and background citrus; much bigger and more dense than #1, this has green apple fruit and a lot of texture; there’s an impression of phenols here more than the acidity; a bit on the heavy side and not very elegant wine for Montrachet; much more alcohol than #1. Decent but not that impressive for Montrachet. Group Rank: Tied for 7th, 1 pt (0/0/0/0/1) 93

#3 [2005 Drouhin Marquis De Laguiche Montrachet (750ml)]
Medium plus gold color; very sweet orange and somewhat alcoholic aromas – very close to sherry-like aromas (we debated a bit over whether this was partially oxidized or just advanced); on the palate it was a little better- a fairly sweet lemon custard flavor, but the finish was toasty and bordered on oxidation again. Hard to rate this – a 92 for the mid-palate and 85 for the rest, so maybe 88 overall. The group consensus was that this was very advanced. Group Rank: Tied for 9th, 0 pts 88-Very Advanced

#4 [2005 Jadot Montrachet]
Medium full gold color; unmistakably strong sherry aromas exuding from the glass; totally gone and undrinkable. Unanimous agreement that this was oxidized. Group Rank: Tied for 9th, 0 pts DQ-Oxidized

#5 [2005 Lafon Montrachet]
Medium gold color; very sweet overripe pear aromas with a touch of yeast; on the palate this initially came across as thick and dull and bit leesy; and there was a notably warm sensation on the finish (alcohol). After nearly four hours of air, after many had left, this seemed quite a bit better – still overripe on the aromas, but the yeasty/leesy components were gone and there was some decent fruit on the mid-palate and the alcohol didn’t seem so noticeable. Group consensus was very advanced. [NB At the price being asked for this wine it is a ridiculously bad value] Group Rank: Tied for 9th, 0 pts 87|92?-Very Advanced

#6 [2005 Drouhin Marquis De Laguiche Montrachet (magnum)]
Medium gold color; fully mature peach and pear pastry aromas; very nice lemon chiffon pie flavors with some nice minerality on the finish. Some elegance here. Just wish it wasn’t so obviously advanced in the color and aromas department. The group consensus was that this was much better than the 750ml.bottle but still somewhat advanced. Drink now. Group Rank: Tied for 7th, 1 pt (0/0/0/0/1) 94-Advanced

Flight Two – Montrachet (all wines served single blind)

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Dover Sole Filet with Potato Gnocchi, King Oyster Mushrooms, Wild Spinach
(N.B. This dish looks much more interesting than it tasted. An extremely rare disappointing food course from Melisse)

#7 [2005 Henri Boillot Montrachet]
Medium gold color; very ripe apple turnover aromas; very rich and somewhat heavy apple pastry flavors without much acidity; this got a bit toasty and ponderous on the finish as the evening wore on. The group consensus was this was advanced. Group Rank: Tied for 7th, 1 pt (0/0/0/0/1) 92|89-Advanced

#8 [2005 Ramonet Montrachet]
Between light and medium gold color; gooseberry and light white flowers aromas; very sweet lemon-lime fruit and minerals on the mid-palate and finish with a little bit of layering effect but with just a trace of bitterness on the late part of the finish that got a little more prominent by the end of the evening. My number four wine of the night, but by the end it was a closer race. Group Rank: 4th, 22 pts (0/0/2/8/0) 95|94

#9 [2005 Sauzet Montrachet]
Medium full gold color; sweet pear and floral aromas; on the palate this had white nectarine flavors but was a bit flabby; the finish was pear fruit and modest minerals. Based on the color alone, I thought this wine was advanced, but the rest of the group didn’t label it advanced (probably because good wines seemed few and far between among the Montrachets.). Group Rank: 6th, 2 pts (0/0/0/0/2) 93 (advanced for me based on the color).

#10 [2005 Le Moine Montrachet]
Deep gold color but not quite brown; sweet sherry aromas and ripe peach flavors but with a very odd astringency on this wine. Group Rank: Tied for 9th, 0 pts DQ-Oxidized

#11 [2005 Fontaine-Gagnard Montrachet]
Medium gold color; sweet gooseberry and peach aromas – odd combination; on the palate this had overripe peach flavors that seemed clearly past their prime; someone said the wine smelled like a trip to the dentist’s office. The group consensus was that this was very advanced. Group Rank: Tied for 9th, 0 pts 92-Very Advanced

Flight Three – 2005 Coche-Dury Wines (all wines served single blind)

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Roasted Jidori Chicken with Baby Broccoli, Braised Yuba, Vadouvan Spice

#12 [2005 Coche-Dury Meursault Perreries]
Light gold color; aromas of white flowers and meyer lemon; concentrated meyer lemon and minerals flavors with a clear sense of layering and breath-taking depth; very good acidity here; there is an extraordinarly long lemon and minerals finish on this wine. This has to be the MP. This could even improve with time. My number one wine of the night. Group Rank: Tied for 1st, 44 pts (5/4/1/0/0) 97+

#13 [2005 Coche Meursault Genevrieres]
Light gold color, but the deepest color of the flight; white flowers, pear and sweet citrus aromas; this had a somewhat fatter texture, pear and citrus flavors and modest sweetness; there is very nice acidity here too but it’s a bit more masked than #12; a very long slightly sweet pear and minerals finish. This seems to be the Genevrieres. By the very end of the night the finish on this wine seemed less fruity and more austere. The components to age and perhaps improve. My third favorite wine of the night. Group Rank: Third, 30 pts (0/2/6/2/0) 95+

#14 [2005 Coche-Dury Corton Charlemagne]
Yellow color with hints of green like Chablis in a good vintage; it is absolutely amazing to encounter a wine that looks this young as the last bottle of 65 wines from the vintage; slightly sweet green apple aromas with just a touch of vanilla (oak); intense green apple flavors and really great acidity; a very long minerally finish with an apple butter texture. This is clearly the Corton. This wine is truly young and has potential for further improvement. My number two wine of the night. Group Rank: Tied for 1st, 44 pts (5/4/1/0/0) 96+

Dessert Course

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Apple Tarte Tatin with Ricotta Ice Cream, Black Sage Syrup

1995 Turley Roussane Alban Vineyards Late Picked Reserve (375ml)
Slightly milky amber color (reminiscent of some German BA and TBA wines); an amazing cornucopia of botrytised and candied fruit in the aromas and highly complex and layered flavors with amazing levels of sweetness but yet the acidity of the best German TBAs and Eisweins; this was a truly awesome dessert wine. My friends Ron Greene and Ron Movich, who are both stickies collectors, went crazy over this with Ron Greene comparing it to some 59 Germans he’s had. There’s no question that this is the best California dessert wine I’ve ever had and for me this easily eclipsed the wonderful 90 Y’Quem from night two. 98

Postscript statistics and comments:

Oxidation–2/15 13%
Corked – 0/15 0%
Advanced-5/15 33%
Oxidized or advanced =7/15 47%

Cumulative Premature Aging Statistics–Nights one, two and three

Oxidation–4/65 6%
Corked – 1/66 2% [Corked bottle of Raveneau MDT replaced on night one]
Advanced-16/65 25%
Oxidized plus advanced =20/65 31%

With all of the results in, 2005 is the worst year ever from a premature aging standpoint. While the percentage of oxidized wines was only 6% (well below the 18% oxidized from the 1996 vintage – which we tasted at 10 years of age – and the 20% oxidized from the 1999 vintage), the percentage of advanced 2005 wines was really appalling (25%). The combined total of advanced and oxidized wines for 2005 (31%) exceeds the total for the 1996s (29%) and the 1999s (27%).

Unfortunately, the overwhelming number of advanced wines we experienced over the first two nights of tasting 2005s just got worse when we got to the Montrachets. The group agreed that 7 of the 11 examples of Montrachet were either advanced or oxidized. I personally felt one more wine (the Sauzet) should be added to the advanced list, which made my personal total 8 out of 11. It was an extremely depressing showing for Montrachet, especially in light of the prices many of these bottles command in the current market. But the Coche wines saved the evening. All three of them were youthful and absolutely brilliant and all showed potential for further development. If you have 2005 Coche wines, be happy. If you have any Montrachets from any of the producers other than Ramonet, Marc Colin and Bouchard, drink them soon or abandon ship

The 2005 Vintage “Mostly Montrachet” dinner served as an appropriate tombstone for the most open and advanced vintage we’ve experienced in eight years of doing these vintage assessment dinners. It seems apparent in retrospect that the 2005s suffered from over-ripeness and, for whatever reason, the Montrachets as a group represent the worst case scenario of advanced wines from the 2005 vintage.

Cumulative Cheers and Jeers

Cheers go to:

• Coche-Dury - Absolutely brilliant wines. Proving, once again, that premox (or the lack thereof) is a function of winemaking, not something caused by circumstances not under the winemaker’s control.

• Colin-Morey - Pierre-Yves had all five of his bottles finish in the top eight rankings for the first two dinners and no oxidized or advanced wines.

• Roulot - His two Meursaults were fabulous. On the last night, I found myself wishing that Jean-Marc made Montrachet too.

• Paul Pernot– two excellent and youthful wines in the top five on night one; his best showing ever

• Leflaive – finished first and second on night two with all three wines in the top 10, but these wines are not in the usual reductive Leflaive style. Quite open and drinkable now.

Jeers go to:

• Le Moine - 4 bottles with 2 oxidized, 1 advanced, 1 good

• Jadot – 3 bottles with 1 oxidized, 1 advanced, 1 good. (Proving, once again, that one’s expectations can never be too low with post-1999 Jadot whites.)

• Lafon – 3 bottles with 2 advanced and 1 good

• Bouchard - 3 bottles with 2 advanced and 1 excellent

• Mikulski - 2 bottles of the same wine – 1 oxidized and 1 very advanced. I actually thought even the second bottle was partially oxidized.

A truly shocking tale of woe. Very glad I sold my case of jadot monty a few years ago!

I have been underwhelmed by the 05 Coche MP as I found it to be an oaky mess., but I have not drank a bottle recently.
Time to revisit.

Thanks again Don for the brilliant notes.

A brief question on the food, I love Melisse, but it appeared the food at Valentino possibly topped Melisse??

Always interesting to read these updates, thank you for the details and the photos. I had but one dinner at Melisse and it was memorable.

Thanks for the notes and photos!

Since the Leflaives are not their usual reductive style and so open at this time, would you consider them advanced (for Leflaive)?

Great notes Don. Thanks again for sharing. This is truly helpful to all burgundy collectors.

Really enjoyed reading the notes of all three dinners. Overall very depressing though since I am a big fan of white Burgs and still have many from 1999-2005… My buying has changed though as has my drinking of them. Buying many fewer over $100 and drinking them far younger… Pains me that the young greatness of some of the 02s and 04s such as the Jadot CM Dem never fulfilled the promise.

That said sometimes it is just a matter of luck and luck can hold - my group for dinner last night was playing with fire so to speak and opened a 2005 Martray CC and 2002 Sauzet Monty and 2002 Morey Blanc Monty - as it turned out the first and third were terrific and showing brightness and zest, with only the Sauzet just a bit advanced.

Oof.

Truly shocking that wines not even 10 years old are showing such a high percentage of oxidation and other advanced characteristics.

Thanks for the post.

Thanks for the report, Don, as depressing as it is. I guess Steve Tanzer was wrong when he predicted that vintages post 2002 would see the problem in the rearview mirror… LOL.

Don, as always, kudos for organizing these massive February tastings each year.

The 05 Turley dessert wine was totally amazing, up there in stupendous-ness (concentration, fruit, acidity, sharp-cutting balance) with such greats as the 83 Zilliken Eiswein.

For my palate, the food at Melisse is/was an order of magnitude better than Valentino, save for the Risotto course at Valentino, which was excellent. Valentino did an excellent job managing the logistics of the whole operation, as does Melisse.

The 05 Leflaives may not be advanced, but they sure are boring and disappointing.

The 05 Coche’s were as amazing as Don stated they were.

Thanks Don, another fantastic report.

Bottom line, make wine like Coche!

Great work Don. Absolutely shocking results of course. Line up 20 well credentialed Aussie or US Chardonnays and I doubt very much that you would see results like that, although the highs would be nowhere near as high.
It’s a disgrace, They need to pull their fingers out and get it sorted.
BTW, teh food looks superb, expecially the Dover Sole and Scallop courses.

Thanks Don for another interesting and insightful tasting.

Le Moine again showing yet again how disappointing their wines are. Luckily I stopped buying them after 2005, still, what a waste of several thousand dollars…

Lafon is another white producer I will never again touch, not only are the wines so often premoxed, even when they are they aren’t really that good…

Glad the Coches showed well, and you finished on a high note, still a somewhat disappointing night.

Thanks Don for posting.

Lew

I never thought that prediction was realistic and at the time wondered if it was typo as to the vintage. The premature oxidation problem first surfaced in 2003. The first article mentioning it was Issue 116 of Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar in September 2004. Two months later Allen Meadows first wrote some brief comments about the problem. But Robert Parker, Wine Spectator, Decanter and the rest of the mainstream wine press remained silent about it for years thereafter. In 2005 the premature oxidation thread started on the E-Robert Parker site and the issue finally began to get some traction among wine collectors and the industry. Most producers spent the next two years refusing to publicly acknowledge that there was any oxidation problem at all (and too many are still in that same position today.)

Aside from Verget, who claims that he substantially increased his use of SO2 and eliminated batonnage starting with the 1997 vintage, the earliest oxidation-related changes that I’m aware of by the burgundy domaines began with either the 2003 or 2004 vintages. At that point Montille and Carillon, both of whom had significant oxidation problems in 1995 and 1996, increased their SO2 levels. With the 2005 vintage, Sauzet made a number of changes including increasing their SO2 level, bottle shape, cork treatments, etc. But these were the only producers who publicly acknowledged making any changes in their winemaking related to premature oxidation before the 2006 vintage. In the 2006 and 2007 vintages addditional producers began to make changes.

Because of the big problems with the vintage conditions on the 2006s (a mix of gray rot, botrytis, high ripeness and relatively low acidity), I’m dubious at best about the 2006 vintage showing any improvement at 7.5 years from age regardless of any technique changes that may have been made. But some of my LA colleagues think the 2006s are showing better lately and they want to try at least a limited group of them next year and assess where they are.

I think 2007 is the first vintage where there will be realistic chance to see some substantial improvement in the numbers overall. But I won’t predict that the 2007 vintage will mark the end of the problem. There are still far too many producers today who are still in denial, and either won’t discuss premature oxidation at all, or claim that they haven’t made any changes at all in their winemaking. My friend John Tilson, the editor of the Underground Wine Letter is more of a skeptic and thinks it is unrealistic to expect signifcant improvement on the incidence of premox until we get to the 2010 vintage when it reaches seven to eight years of age (i.e. the fall of 2017 to the fall of 2018.)

Paul:

Mounir Saouma of Le Moine wrote to me (and the others who attended the dinners) after he saw the results from the third tasting and the prior notes. He doesn’t believe what we experienced on the 2005s was oxidation and insists the 2005s are closed. If it wasn’t oxidation we were dealing with, then 24 of us, including his own US importer, the California importer of Drouhin and a winery owner were completely fooled.

In the email Mounir did explain his techniques for making white wine:

• “here we work as following: a lot of lees , both alcoholic and malo in barrel WITHOUT RACKING for 24 months , no sulfur before 18 months of aging , bottling with more than 1000 mg of CO2 (Average for others is around 400 ) and Only 15/20 mg of SO2 (norm today is 50 ) , our wines are different. They are very deep colored at bottling…”

I’ve expressed to Mounir my opinions that CO2 is not a substitute chemically for SO2, that CO2 does nothing to prevent the oxidation of ethanol or phenols once the wine is in the bottle, and that by adding no sulfites until bottling and bottling with only 15 to 20 ppm of S02 his wines are virtually guaranteed to become prematurely oxidized.

Don, I am with you here.

2 bottle each of the '02, '04 and '05 Montrachet, with 5 out or the 6 bottles clearly oxidized (one '04 was ok, but just not a great wine).

Extended aeration did nothing for the wines, and I recall at least twice leaving them to look at the next day, with no improvement evident and a clearly prematurely oxidized profile.

Paul

Please add the additional bottles to the wiki site when you have a moment.

Excellent post, great for someone like me who is finding an interest in white burg

Thanks for posting - Don.

Sad - I am sorry for myself but I am happy that I made the right choice ( which is : just a maxi of 2 to 3 bottles of each expensive 1er cru or each g-crus and drink them young ) after vintge 2002…