Morey-Saint-Denis

Morey-St Denis, Les Faconnières offers a dense, purple colour with an almost black centre. Virgile considers the soil to be similar to Clos de la Roche. It is more backward than the other Premiers Crus, dense and ungiving at this stage yet with a magical intensity of fruit, a crunchy finish, and excellent balance. Drink 2002-2028

When Virgile Lignier came back from his brief summer holidays, he toured the vines and saw a bit of rot on a biggish (by recent standards) crop, so he took a substantial team round to remove damaged bunches and anything unripe. He picked the healthy grapes from 17th September and gave the new vintage a long but light extraction. He has made some very succulent, juicy wines here in 2014. 

Bright, mid-purple colour, this has a more linear, mineral nose, compared to the flesh of Les Charmes. Indeed this is quite chiselled by Virgile’s standards. The fruit offers a raspberry and fresh blackberry mix. The chalky soil shows in this very mineral wine, which has a delightful finish. Drink 2021-2026

When Virgile Lignier came back from his brief summer holidays, he toured the vines and saw a bit of rot on a biggish (by recent standards) crop, so he took a substantial team round to remove damaged bunches and anything unripe. He picked the healthy grapes from 17th September and gave the new vintage a long but light extraction. He has made some very succulent, juicy wines here in 2014.

The clay in the soil here gives a depth of flavour and a roundness of style to this wine. It is pure purple in colour, with a lovely generosity of fruit, yet still with the freshness of the vintage. Very pure and long.
Jasper Morris MW – Wine Buyer

Bright purple with medium density, this has a ripe, red-cherry nose. The elegant fruit is backed by a surprisingly firm structure which will require time.

Though we still have the pleasure of tasting with Christian Sérafin, it is now his niece, Frédérique who is solely responsible for winemaking. Christian describes 2014 as being all about elegance and balance, with neither too much acidity nor tannin. The Sérafin wines always repay patience.

Rich, ripe purple colour with a sense of energy to the nose. It has ripe, glossy fruit, a touch dry behind, but with weight at the back of the palate. Fruit comes storming back at the finish to confirm the potential. 
Jasper Morris, MW - Wine Buyer

Christian Sérafin is very happy with how 2013 worked out in the end, though yields were once again 25% below normal, even if a touch more than in 2012. The team removed rot and unripe bunches in the vineyard, then waited to pick until after the wet weekend which helped both sugar and acidity.

Dense purple in the glass, this very backward still on the nose, but luxurious on the palate. Tight behind, it shows the oak a bit. Not one for immediate pleasure but with a huge potential for the long-term future.  
Jasper Morris, MW - Wine Buyer

After lengthy negotiations, we have secured a good allocation of these top class 2013s from Jérôme Castagnier. We fell just as much in love with the generic wines as with those further up the scale. Jérôme began on 1st October, taking pains to verify the ripeness of each vineyard before deciding the picking date. The grapes were all de-stemmed.

Bright purple, this is a little more open than the Clos St Denis, and is absolutely mouthfilling, with deep red fruit, floral notes, a mineral thread and great length. Bouncing, floral, vivacious and very young. Highly recommended. 
Jasper Morris, MW - Wine Buyer

After lengthy negotiations, we have secured a good allocation of these top class 2013s from Jérôme Castagnier. We fell just as much in love with the generic wines as with those further up the scale. Jérôme began on 1st October, taking pains to verify the ripeness of each vineyard before deciding the picking date. The grapes were all de-stemmed.

Fine, bright, if pale colour, with lovely, vibrant fruit and plenty of energy; this is absolutely delicious with some sultry silkiness, classic Clos St Denis. Very persistent, not a heavyweight.

Frédéric Barnier believes that the harvest was saved by the fine weather at the end of August and the month of September. The reds were more in advance than the whites until the last moment and fermentations went really well, with early malolactics. The white wines are all bottled with Diam closures, the reds natural corks.

Until 31st August this product is discounted by 30%*
Deepish purple in colour, this is really fabulously classy with great density and a lifted magical finish. Some blood orange notes lurk in the fruit. Altogether this is a red-blooded wine – really terrific. The finish is awesome: the whole range is really fine this year.

Our jovial friend Jérôme Castagnier has excelled himself this year. The promise we picked up on last year has really been delivered in 2014. He says that the wines have lovely flesh but also a beautiful freshness, and notes some similarities to 2010. His generic Burgundies (available on www.bbr.com/burgundy2014) are also excellent.
*Discount already applied to product price. No further discount will be applied at checkout.

Until 31st August this product is discounted by 30%*
Bright pink purple with a very stylish – rather than explosive – nose, more redolent of Chambolle sensuality than Morey wildness. Great weight on the palate and a lovely mineral thread behind, fine and stylish.
Jasper Morris, MW - Wine Buyer

Despite this being a very late season, Patrice compares 2013 to the fruit of early vintages such as 2007 and 2011, but with more stuffing. It also reminds him of 1980, a particularly successful vintage chez Rion. The 2013 crop is a small one though, a touch more than 2012 but less than 2011. They employed two sorting tables, and since the grapes which reached the vats were all healthy, they used less sulphur during vinification.

*Discount already applied to product price. No further discount will be applied at checkout.

A graceful tint of pale purple. Floral, with appealing sweet red fruit, clearly some concentration to the cherry and raspberry fruit, while there is clearly much more to emerge later on.
Jasper Morris MW - Wine Buyer

Apparently, the quality of this wine burst forth during fermentation. It is very different from Jadot’s Echézeaux with a striking red fruit nose, raspberry and redcurrant fruit, very good length and exceptional finesse.
Jasper Morris MW,Berrys' Burgundy Director

Jacques Lardière, a veteran of 40 vintages, has been joined by Frédéric Barnier who has rapidly developed a detailed knowledge of all the Jadot vineyards, as well as playing a major role in the cellar alongside Jacques. This year the reds have had a slightly shorter vatting time than usual which gives them a notable delicacy of touch. The whites have an excellent balancing acidity as Jadot have retained much of the malic acid this year. Almost all the Jadot wines we offer can be considered as domaine bottled, from one or other of their holdings. 

---

Just two barrels were made this year, but what a fabulous wine it is! Glorious, explosive, brilliant, rich purple fruit bursts out of the barrel, an exceptional example of the seductive hedonistic style of Clos St Denis.
Jasper Morris MW, Burgundy Wine Director

Jacques Lardière is now in charge of a new project in Oregon, after 40 years at Louis Jadot, and Frédéric Barnier is fully installed in Beaune in his place. In principal, however, there are not expected to be any changes to the winemaking. Frédéric describes 2012 as a superb vintage for reds with very healthy grapes, despite the difficult growing season. He notes the exceptionally concentrated fruit coupled with good acidity. He just had to take care to avoid over firm tannins. The whites were more difficult but their practice of retaining a proportion of the malic acid has been useful this year. All the whites are now bottled with DIAM corks.

All the stems were used in vinification but, such is the intensity of the fruit, they don’t show. This is a rich, plump purple with a surfeit of ripe, velvety red fruit. It is very clean, very pure and very direct: lots of stuffing and lots of stems give this a very tight profile for the moment. This will take a bit longer than some vintages – but promises to be first rate.

Thierry Brouin, whose successor at the Domaine des Lambrays is about to be unveiled, is very happy with 2014, his 36th vintage in charge here. He began picking on 22nd September, relatively late by his standards, and is happy to have produced a little more wine this year (with the exception of the Premier Cru).

Very pure, with very elegant raspberry and dark cherry fruit, this fills the mouth without ever becoming heavy. It has an immensely long, silky finish, still displaying notes of cherry and peony as well as a little pepper spice.
Jasper Morris MW, Berrys' Burgundy Director Thierry Brouin is extremely happy with his 2011 vintage which has produced a little more wine than in 2010. “It is very good this year, very Lambrays”, he says. Once more the pricing for this near-monopoly Grand Cru has been kept very reasonable. As ever, the grapes were picked early and the stems were retained for the Grand Cru. There was little or no rot but Thierry took care to eliminate any under-ripe grapes on the sorting table.

---

Jasper divides his time between England and Burgundy. His unique position led him to write the ultimate guide to the vineyards of the region, Inside Burgundy. Described as “the greatest reference work of our generation” by Bill Nanson (www.burgundyreport. com), and “an essential book for anyone remotely interested in the region and its wines” by Neal Martin (www.erobertparker.com), this outstandingly detailed book, in 656 pages, covers one thousand specific vineyards, from Grands Crus to obscure plots.

Jasper Morris MW’s award-winning classic volume ‘Inside Burgundy’ is now available as a series of beautifully designed, interactive, Multi- Touch eBooks for the iPad and iPad Mini.
Inside Burgundy: The Côte de Beaune is the first volume is available for £14.99 on the Apple iBookStore. It is accompanied by the first edition of an innovative new Annual Report on Burgundy by Jasper Morris. Inside Burgundy The Annual Report 2012/13 is downloadable for free.

Rich inky purple belies the finesse which is soon apparent in the mouth. Very beautiful and extremely long, with tingling minerals underneath the coating of velvet. This is always the most elegant of the Bernstein grands crus.
(Jasper Morris MW, BBR Buyer)

The grapes were picked in two tranches, a week apart, in order to optimise quality. There is terrific vigorous fruit anda little spice on the very dense palate. The fruit really surges to all parts of the mouth. This is very impressive for the vintage.

Only one barrel of this wine is made for the whole world, from 40-year-old vines. With a bright, fresh purple colour, this has an attractive touch of wildness on the nose, typical of Bonnes Mares, with a wealth of fruit behind, a perfect balance of acidity, and excellent length.

Patrice Rion compares 2014 to a mix of 1979 and 1989 for the aromatics and delighted to have been able to pick a more or less normal-sized crop. He began on 12th September with healthy grapes, reinforced by his system of two sorting tables, one before and one after de-stemming. The amount of new oak has been reduced here, now just 30 percent on most cuvées.

Sadly this is a very small cuvée but we like it a lot, despite the touch of reduction on the nose. There is a wealth of fruit, a lively thread of acidity, with notes of black cherries and fresh raspberry in this large-scale, flamboyant wine. Seductive, fresh and succulent, it is very agreeable. With beautiful, juicy dark fruit, this really blossoms with time in the glass. Drink 2021-2030.
Jasper Morris MW, Wine Buyer

Jérôme Castagnier is the Guide Hachette’s Burgundian vigneron of the year for 2017 and has been shortlisted for young vigneron of the year in the region’s own awards, so it is all happening for him. He began picking his 2015s on September 9th and finished on Saturday 12th before the rain that fell later that day. This year he has used one-third whole bunches for his village wines and the Crus, and in the last two years has refined his barrel regime so that the wood has less impact on the wine. Note that the malolactic fermentation was only just finishing when we tasted and this may have impacted the bouquets.