Retasting Burgundy 2007

Nicknamed ‘Burgfest’, a tasting takes place every year when a group of importers along with Clive Coates and Neil Beckett (World of Fine Wine Magazine) meet to assess a recent wine vintage of Burgundy. About 300 wines at 1er and Grand Cru level are tasted blind across the best part of three days. The purpose of this tasting is to assess the development of the vintage as well as to see which growers and wines have performed well in that particular year.

For the 2007 vintage our Wine Buyer, Jasper Morris MW (author of a new book, ‘Inside Burgundy‘ ) delivers his detailed findings below.
Wines from the top-rated selection that are in stock are listed further down in the page.

Côte de Beaune
The Côte de Beaune showed exactly as we expected: plenty of attractive wines with immediately engaging fruit, albeit with few high spots of tightly knit wines destined for a long term future.

Beaune Among 30 or so Beaune wines I was impressed by some of Chanson’s bottlings but gave my joint top score’s to Nicolas Potel’s Beaune Grèves (from his domaine), which was also the top wine for the group as a whole, and Bouchard’s Beaune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésu

Volnay
Three flights of Volnay (27 wines in all) included very good wines from:

• Henri Boillot,
• Comte Lafon (Champans),
• Pousse d’Or (Bousse d’Or) and
• de Montille (Taillepieds), as well as
• Bouchard’s Caillerets.

The vintage shows well here, and thankfully free of the hail which has hit Volnay more often than most villages in the last decade.

Pommard
Pommard and Corton also showed well in their richer, firmer styles. Pick of the dozen Pommards were Pousse d’Or’s Jarollières, and Rugiens from both de Montille and Faiveley.

Corton
Five wines shared top billing for me (Jadot’s Pougets, Thibault Liger Belair’s Renardes, Tollot Beaut’s Bressandes, and Clos du Roi from Pousse d’Or and de Montille). The latter was joint favourite of the group alongside Leroy’s Corton Renardes.

Côte de Nuits
Here the wines showed greater ripeness than in the Côte de Beaune, though without developing any black fruit characteristics. This needs some explanation: the best wines showed some density of concentrated red fruit with adequate structure for ageing, while those which were perhaps picked too late showed a much softer character suggesting that they should be opened and enjoyed relatively soon. 

Nuits St Georges
Last year we were immensely impressed by the quality of the Nuits St Georges offerings, and this year the commune (which we taste in four flights, by sector) again caught our attention. This is something worth further thought on another occasion, because I am becoming more and more convinced that this commune is undervalued. The team selected:

• Nuits St Georges Vaucrains from Chevillon,
• Les St Georges from Thibault Liger Belair and
• Les Murgers from Cathiard.

As well as these three I also gave high marks to

• Clos St Marc (Rion),
• La Richemone (Perrot Minot)
• and Les Pruliers (Taupenot-Merme).

Chambolle Musigny
The stars interestingly came from a small flight of the vineyards at higher altitude such as:

• Les Cras from Roumier,
• Les Fuées from Mugnier and
• Le Combe d’Orveau from both Perrot-Minot and Taupenot-Merme.

Mugnier’s Amoureuses was the pick from that particular vineyard while he and de Vogue vied for precedence among the Musignys. The team went for Mugnier though I thought de Vogue’s wine had a great deal in reserve for the long haul.

Clos de Vougeot
Two flights  saw Méo-Camuzet come out on top both for me and the group as a whole. I also particularly rated the wines from Domaine d’Eugenie, Thibault Liger-Belair and Denis Mortet while the team selected the latter plus Michel Gros and Anne Gros as their runners up.

Gevrey-Chambertin 
The most interesting of the flights was the one concerning four Cazetiers and four Clos St Jacques, with the former in the ascendancy for once.

• Fior Les Cazetiers, brilliant wines from both Christian Sérafin and Camille Giroud.
• Rousseau then Fourrier led the Clos St Jacques department.
• Other wines which stood out were Rousseau’s Lavaut St Jacques and Dujac’s Combottes, for both me and the team as a whole

Chambertin
Dauntingly, we had too many Charmes-Chambertins (including Mazoyères) to manage in a single flight. Denis Bachelet was the clear winner. An interesting subplot was to compare alongside each other both Charmes-Chambertin and Mazoyères-Chambertin from Perrot-Minot and Taupenot- Merme and in both cases we preferred the Mazoyères. Among the other satellite Chambertin Grands Crus, the group’s favourite wine was Mugneret-Gibourg’s Ruchottes-Chambertin. To complete the Gevrey line-up we tried four Chambertin Clos de Bèze wines and six Chambertins, the best of the latter coming from Rousseau, Rossignol-Trapet and Henri Boillot, just ahead of Bruno Clair’s Chambertin Clos de Bèze

Vosne-Romanée
Highlights for me were several wines from Comte Liger Belair, Emmanuel Rouget’s Cros Parantoux and Grivot’s Vosne Romanée les Suchots. Domaine Lamarche  provided the pick of the Echezeaux wines before we reached the final flight of grand crus featuring Romanée St Vivant, Richebourg, La Romanée and La Grande Rue.

Among several very fine wines, two stood out: in second place Grivot’s brilliantly defined Richebourg, and the overall winner, with 19 points from me and 18.45 from the group as a whole, the magically seductive La Grande Rue from Domaine Lamarche.