Our wine club Euryanthe got together yesterday to taste 2005 white Burgundies . We were interested in exploring the stage of their development , if there would be premox , and of course which ones were best .
Overall , it was a great success . While the grand cru’s are understandably closed , most 1er cru’s were drinking beautifully . I was told by vignerons in Burgundy that this vintage is closed at the moment but that is not so .
Sadly , we had 2 premoxed bottles and from VERY famous producers indeed .
All the wines were double decanted 4 hours before the tasting .They were served in duo’s .
This was a blind tasting of 20 wines , 10 tasters present .
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Spices dominate , easily identified as Coche , intens and sharp , very slightly dry finish . 91/100 ( JF Coche Dury Meursault Villages )
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More mineral , softer texture , elegant wine . 92/100 ( Raveneau Montée de Tonnerre )
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More liqueur on the nose , very ripe and slightly exotic , to drink now 89/100 ( Billaud-Simon Chablis Preuses )
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Corked ! ( Dauvissat Chablis Preuses )
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Really great wine ! Round and ripe , perfect balance , with ages ahead . 95/100 ( Chablis Clos Raveneau )
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More tight and closed . Very mineral with great concentration . Very different in style . Great wine 10 years from now 93+/100 ( Chablis Clos Dauvissat )
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Elegant and spicy , delicious wine for now , fresh , “ rafiné “ , 93/100 ( Arnaud Ente , Puligny les Referts )
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Somewhat fatter in style versus the previous one , but it remained its elegance . Lovely . 92/100 ( Carillon Puligny Les Referts )
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Spicy sexy wine . Delicious . Open for business . 94/100 ( Coche Dury Meursault Caillerets )
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Much more closed . Very young and unyielding . You taste the power but not ( yet ) any complexity . ( Pousse d’Or , Puligny Caillerets )
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A great wine . Wood , honey , spice , great lingering acidity , this has it all . 95/100 ( Domaine Leflaive , Puligny Pucelles )
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Also delicious wine ( served together with previous one ). Impossible to choose which is best . This one is more elegant with a peachy nose . Perfect to drink now . 95/100 ( Coche Dury Puligny Enseigneres )
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Over the top wine . oxidative . Became worse after 5 minutes in the glass . NR ( Comte Lafon Meursault Goutte d’Or )
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Super nose of gun powder , nuts and citrus . Amazing concentration . Who other than Lalou Bize Leroy can make such a wine ? My WOTN. 96/100 ( Meursault Goutte d’Or , d’Auvenay )
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Slightly oxidative ( “ pommadé “ ) which gets worse over 10 minutes , this is not right . NR ( Batard Montrachet Henri Boillot )
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Very fine , elegant , mineral . Still very young but great class . 93+/100 ( PY Colin , Corton Charlemagne )
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Delicious wine but it misses concentration to be really great . Elegant . 93/100 ( Chevalier Montrachet , Pillot )
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Longer , fuller , has more of everything 95/100 ( turned out to be another PY Colin Corton Charlemagne ). After unblinding the wines , I tasted them side by side and I found the second bottle slightly more open and evolved . Because of the different decanting times ? This was the only bottle out of the 20 wines that was brought in at the last minute .
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Totally closed wine . You taste greatness but that’s about it . Difficult to assess. 95+/100 ( Chevalier Montrachet Domaine Leflaive ) later that night , it revealed some of its potential , but I would leave this wine alone for another 10 years .
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Surprisingly deep yellow color . Utterly delicious now . Slightly controversial because some tasters around the table were suspicious about the color , associating it with an advanced stage of development . Not in the glass though . 96/100 . ( Montrachet , Lucien le Moine )
At the end , I asked everybody to vote for their favorite wines . Overall winner was the Meursault Goutte d’Or : 9 out the 10 tasters voted it as WOTN ! Second place was for JF Coche Dury Puligny Enseigneres , third place for the Puligny Pucelles from Leflaive . ( grand cru’s were too closed to compare now ).
My conclusion is that the 1er cru’s are drinking beautifully now , at least at these top domaines .