Travels in Burgundy 1999

Day 1 - wine tasting

Monday morning, first tasting

Domaine THEVENOT-LE BRUN (Marey les Fussey). I arrive here at 9 o'clock. M.Thevenot is extremely friendly, much more friendly than last year. We taste some whites in the tasting room.

Then we were off into the cellars (more like a large clean agricultural building, in fact, with upright tanks for the wine 25 ft high). Here we tasted wines from tank and from cask, not yet bottled. These were the 98s - a theoretically difficult vintage, but all the growers I visited seem to have made perfectly good wines, with excellent colours in the reds and nicely concentrated flavours. At this domaine the whites were particularly impressive.

I was running short of time. Last year, my visit had been over rather quickly, so I had only allotted one hour this time. It was not enough. M.Thevenot let me telephone to the next domaine to say I would be late.

Then back to the tasting room to try some bottles of red. The Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits 1996 especially struck me with its combination of fresh strawberry fruitiness and vinosity.

M.Thevenot thought it might be nice to round off my visit with a quick tour of his vineyards, so we made for his Citroen van (just like mine). We got in. No keys. He got out and went to look for them. No luck, so we we went in my van instead. The vines were all immaculately kept. They definitely have their priorities right, namely to produce the highest quality fruit with which to make their wine.

Domaine BERNARD AMIOT (Chambolle-Musigny). After lunch I visited M.Amiot, where they were rather taken up with a courtier, who was tasting through the domaine's wines, so I had to wait a minute while they dealt with him. A courtier is an intermediary between the grower and the large merchants in Beaune and Nuits St. Georges - an important person in the life of many small growers in Burgundy. As usual, the tasting here was quite brisk, but an interesting and encouraging development at this domaine is that one of the Amiot fils was about, and making efforts to be friendly to me, suggesting that maybe the question of succession (which had not looked promising a couple of years ago when I first visited) is resolving itself. He is a delightful young fellow, and if he is also a competent wine maker, then the future looks exciting.

Domaine PHILIPPE GAVIGNET (Nuits Saint Georges). Next stop Nuits Saint Georges, where M.Gavignet seemed a bit surly. His moods seem very uneven. Nevertheless, he gave me a comprehensive tasting, both in bottle and cask. His Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits "Clos des Dames Huguettes" 1998 (still in cask) particularly impressed me. He told me that before the malolactic fermentation (which takes place any time between Christmas following the harvest and July or later) his wines were extremely tannic, but that after the "malo", the wines softened dramatically -in fact, he had never seen such a big change in any vintage before.

Monday night I spent in a hotel on the edge of Savigny-les-Beaune, where I was the only guest. It seemed quite comfortable. However, I like to wash/shower in the morning. The water had been piping hot at night, but Tuesday morning it was freezing cold. So I'm not going back there again.