hese are mostly from memory so lack some detail
2000 Sociando Mallet – a very recognizable greenness in the mid palate but has lost some of the fruit lushness that characterized it 5-7 years ago, which I had truly enjoyed. (Or possibly it is just bottle variation). A very “stout”, classic, and somewhat rustic wine with excellent substance and solidity to it and a nice tanginess that melded perfectly with the green pepper quality. Felt very classically Haut-Medoc, vigorous and leafy with some high-toned tobacco along with the pyrazines. But lacked some extra depth or fruity seductiveness to really feel like a top wine. Good but not great. Still available well under $100 which feels right for the quality. Will add complexity with age but based on my previous bottle feels like it is perhaps just a bit on the downslope. But as I said this could be bottle variation, it was a secondary market purchase so who knows about storage – my previous bottle was I think purchased on release and perfectly stored.
2014 Fevre Les Lys Chablis 1er – perfect greenish tint to this wine. Perfect tangy sweet and sour / lemon-lime Chablis flavors. Perfect mineral-y refreshment quality. Every sip leaves you wanting more as the finishing acidity both quenches and triggers your thirst. Perfect high end summer wine. Textbook Chablis here with an extra gear and depth over the generic village that makes it more satisfying. $40 price which is good for the quality. Unfortunately out of this.
2016 Guillaume Gilles Cornas – very full, deep, and solid, great Syrah typicity, nice faint metallic tang in the midpalate. Some overripe blackberry and salami. Very good for scratching the Syrah itch but lacked some intrigue to take it to the next level. Felt a tiny bit hot at the end despite just 13.5% alcohol. Very good and solid, even excellent, for what it was but didn’t feel very sophisticated. Maybe just needs to age. Current tariff of $65 felt very fair but not a bargain. I didn’t finish the first night and came back to it the next day after a night in the fridge and if anything it had improved, had added more of a nice subtle sweetness and that Syrah meatiness had come out even further. A very satisfying wine and clearly will age a long time. But not really inspired to get more – I’m curious what it will do with age but the plain fact is that although I like Syrah a lot it’s not my favorite grape
2016 Bertheau Chambolle Musigny – this represents the new normal of $79 Village Burgundies, so I really didn’t want to like it. I don’t want to live in a world where I’m chasing $79 village Burgundy. I bought one bottle out of curiosity and was primed to find faults. Unfortunately I loved it. The reason wines like this are getting so expensive is that they give you something almost impossible to find anywhere else. A light-bodied, red-fruited wine that somehow has this layered fruit intensity along with the lightness. It’s weird, like a magic trick, to taste a wine that is transparent in color, toward the cranberry-ish end of the red fruit flavor spectrum, dances crisply just above your tongue, but at the same time delivers vivid fruit to every corner of your mouth and gives the impression of additional buried layers of sweetness just beyond your perception. In my experience the closest you get to this is maybe some nebbiolo or certain exotic Italian reds but they always feature punch-in-the-face tannins and often cruder flavor elements. This was just so elegant. You could tell it was villages because it didn’t have that extracted midpalate density and “bigness” to it, there wasn’t ostentatious structure, but there was a subtle depth to it and it felt like it could age. What it comes down to is that other regions just do not deliver what Burgundy delivers and that is why we are all stuck with them.
By the way, this was my first Bertheau, and it reminded me somewhat of Hudelot-Noellat in the lifted acidic style but frankly this was perhaps even better, despite being less celebrated. Certainly than the Hudelot-Noellat village wines I’ve had.