If it tastes similar to Chambolle Baudes it’s not true to it’s terroir.
That’s one of those things that might make sense in theory but makes no sense in practice.
Why shouldn’t there be an analogy between wines from two of the more muscular premiers crus in two appellations stereotyped as defined by finesse?
Welcome to Lalou-Land.
The price for all wines Leroy are insane. I have gotten offers for a recent vintage of Musigny at over $30,000 a bottle. And it wouldn’t surprise me if prices of her bottles went up even more after her death — she must be close to 90 now. The nature of the wines depends so much on her palate they are unlikely ever to be quite the same. I feel lucky to have drunk a lot of her 91’s, which was a great vintage for her, certainly greater than the ‘90’s, which all taste stewed to me. The ‘91 RSV is one of the greatest burgundies I have ever tasted, but I would never pay $1,000 for a Savigny-les-Beaunes, a wine that will always be associated with a $25 price point for me.
I’ve had the 02 a few times over the years and it is a great bottle. That price is irrational but the wine is more than in a league of its own vs the other producers listed.
2 Likes
Mark her Narbantons can be flat out gorgeous.
As to the price, there will always be outliers, unicorns when it comes to luxury items. Wine, as discussed here, is surly that! Speaking of outliers, have you tried Guillemont’s Savignys? They are beautiful and priced on the other side of the spectrum from Leroy.
Totally agree here. I constantly compare wines to other wines I have drunk. Quite normal and generally helpful if done properly.
1 Like
I think by focusing on the pricing, I may have framed my original question poorly. Savigny Narbantons generally can be made into perfectly nice wines. But even if you take those made by the best producers, it is still a third tier Burgundy. Lovely, but never that profound. Except it seems for Leroy.
A few here have tasted the wine, and write how good it is. Leaving aside the dollar sale price, how is Lalou able to make a wine that manages to go so far beyond what the terroir seems capable of?
Are any Leroy wines?
I did a video attempting to answer the viticultural side of this question a couple of months ago with regard to her Domaine d’Auvenay Aligoté - and I think the observations are largely extensible to her other appellations. In case it’s of interest…
The associated question is why do we think of Narbantons as merely a “third tier” site. Now, maybe that is true vis a vis Musigny and Romanée-Saint-Vivant, but as a site for growing grapes, if you walk the vineyard, it is evident that it is nonetheless an exceptional spot… So let’s remember that the appellation hierarchy his human and historical as well as geological and topographical!
3 Likes
If you are extrapolating from '88/'89/'90 Leroy wines to what has been done since, I venture that that would be a mistake. Now, given the stratospheric pricing, it is not really helpful to say “try a 2007 Leroy Chambolle Charmes and see what you think”, but, if you were to cross paths with contemporary Leroy wines I’m sure you would change your mind.
I am reading a fascinating book, “The Politics of Wine in Britain” by Charles Luddington. One of its central points is that much of the way we drink wine, or ascribe ranking is as much a product of the politics at the time as the inherent quality of the wine. It is an interesting thesis, and I plan to talk about it more when I finish the book, but even this doesn’t explain the reason why Cote de Beaune reds are not as prized as the Cote de Nuits, but the white wines are obviously prized more.
The book finishes with the Refreshment Houses act of 1860, which codified the duties on wine. Earlier though, the Whigs, a liberal party had pointedly stopped drinking French wine as an act of thumbing their noses at the French. The English did a lot of that over the years; hard to see the current Labour Party making a political point boycotting any wines.
It’s complex and multifactorial, as ever in Burgundy, and it makes as little sense to ascribe the region’s hierarchy of sites exclusively to political, cultural, and historical factors as it does to ascribe them entirely to geology, topography, mesoclimate, and soil hydrology. However, when we have an idée fixte to the effect that Savigny is necessarily a simple, easygoing red destined for a 25 USD per bottle price point, that has very little to do with the inherent potential offered by the terroir.
Interestingly, when one tastes the entire Leroy and d’Auvenay range from bottle, side by side, the experience is simultaneously mind-opening and oddly reassuring: the d’Auvenay Auxey-Duresses whites, for example, would dominate many tastings of grand cru Puligny; yet the d’Auvenay Narvaux and Folatières are appreciably better; and the Chevalier-Montrachet appreciably better still. The same is true of the red wines. The AOC hierarchy is thus both exploded and confirmed in the same tasting. It makes one think…
Talking of Whigs, Robert Walpole used to circumvent his own government’s boycott of French wine by rebottling Bordeaux in port bottles and importing it on an admiralty barge.
Well, YES, I don´t think (like William) that Leroy Narbantons tastes similar to a Chambolle Baudes, rather than a typical Northern Cotes-de-Beaune from the corner Savigny/Pernand/Aloxe, only on very high level usually not to be found in a Savigny 1er Cru, but with a TOP Corton Grand Cru.
It reminds me a bit on Meo-Camuzet Rognet … which isn´t cheap either, but nothing compared to Leroy prices.
Also other Leroy wines are typical for their terroir imho, but also bear a certain Leroy-signature - or is it just that we aren´t used to such a high level of purity and intensity from some vineyards that we call it atypical? I never had a better Volay Santenots than Leroy´s - or rarely any better Volnay.
Once again, a quite interesting video. Makes you wonder why other producers have not tried the same methods? With the prices she gets for her wines, the incentive seems to be there…growing a canopy out seems a fairly low cost change in vineyard management, given the big picture. We are not talking about managing hundreds of acres of this stuff after all…hmmm
1 Like
Nuits Saint Georges famously doesn’t have a Grand Cru, either because of the higher taxes on GCs or because the Gouges at the time, as mayor, thought that it would be seen as self serving.
That being said I have been drinking Savigny for years, and avoided the Leroy, as I thought them lousy values. I love the Ecard and Pavelot wines, but nothing is close even to a good red Corton let alone the better grand crus of the Cote de Nuits.
So a vineyard (Narbantons) can evoke another with distinctly different geology, altitude, soil hydrology, and exposition (Corton Rognet) that’s 2.2 miles and two communes away, but not another that’s 11.5 miles and a handful more communes away?
Malconsorts, Cros Parantoux, until recently La Grand Rue…
And yet, in the Aligoté parcel, the adjacent vineyards are not even planted with vines…
William, if you didn´t get it already, my take with “not true to terroir” was mean funny and not to be taken seriously,
I admit I should have added a ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
Nevertheless to my taste Narbantons doesn´t taste similar to any Chambolle-M, be it Les Baudes or whatever,
but for you it does - and that´s fine with me.
1 Like