TN: 2020 Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Grézeaux

I was intimidated by the very pronounced leather on my first pour of this, but it gave way to a beautiful foreground profile of red fruit - mostly underripe plum - tobacco and various forest delights. There are even pleasantly surprising hints of darker fruit and bitter chocolate. Acidity is medium high, with grippy tannins. It’s obviously an infant which feels slightly confused upon awakening, but the stuffing is terrific, and the value is still terrific at just under 20€.
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Wonderful note Tomás, fully agree about the insane value proposition this cuvée offers and now you have me wondering when the 2020 Les Gréz is going to show up on this side of the pond?

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It’s already in California (wine dot com and Kermit Lynch online), but has a different distributor for other states, it appears. My local store in Missouri hasn’t picked any new Baudry releases up yet, but Missouri WdC orders come from the California warehouse, and I’ve snagged a few.

This is so beautiful and integrated on day 2. The fruit spectrum has expanded to fresh cherries and strawberries, and there’s a wonderful floral aspect harmonizing with wet earth. Leather remains as a background whisper, which is just as well for my taste. I like to believe that it’s never a waste to open a good/great wine, and this is a baby which is providing a lot of satisfaction.

These wines age pretty well, but I never feel like any bottle of Baudry, Plouzeau, Joguet etc. is too young, shut down, infanticide, any of that stuff. These strut pretty close to their full stuff from an early age.

And that’s really a pleasure. I like to geek out about “when is the perfect time to open bottles / how much to aerate” as much as the next WBer, but having wines like these (Brunello is another one) which you can confidently pull out of the cabinet right before serving dinner and know it will drink well, that’s a really nice thing.

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I’ll stray away from all-Loire-cab-franc-will-drink-good-at-any-time camp. For me those highly structured ones can be rough and very tight when drank young. Baudry’s Croix Boissee rouge is an example.

I have definitely not had every bottling and every bottling young, so I’ll defer to you there, but Grezeaux for sure has never been less than delightful young in my experiences.

Surprised to see this vintage already. Don’t think the 2019 has landed here yet.

2020 Domaine Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Grézeaux - France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Chinon (1/30/2024)
– decanted 45 min. before initial taste –
– tasted non-blind over 4 hrs. on Day 1; revisited on Day 2 –

NOSE: “dark”; medium pyrazine; barely-ripe banana; leaning high-toned; a touch stanky; wet stones / petrichor at 3.5hrs open mark.

BODY: garnet-violet color of medium-deep to deep depth; medium-light to medium bodied. Oddly, my 750s have labels intended for mags.

TASTE: jalapeno pyrazine; purple-fruited; light horse tack funk; light, medium-fine, tannins; adequate acidity; alc. not noticeable (13%). Day 2: largely the same as Day 1, including the slight funk; flashy/touch thin. I like-don’t-love it; quite happy to have a couple more at the $23 I paid.

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The 2021 has already arrived. I bought through Saratoga Wine last Fall.