Travels in Burgundy 1999
Day 3
Domaine CLAUDE NOUVEAU (Marchezeuil-Change). A hard-working,
conscientious grower, whose wines are always clean and carefully made with
well-defined fruit. We start with his white 1997s, which are perfumed, fat
and delicious. On to his reds: I have arranged to buy his two Santenays,
which both have a really good smell and excellent length.
Domaine MICHEL SERVEAU (La Rochepot). M.Serveau tells me that
he finds it much easier to sell his reds than his whites, which suits me
fine, because his whites in my opinion are outstanding -in fact his Chassagne-Montrachet
is a masterpiece: not fat and rich, but with wonderful finesse and a flavour
of extraordinary beauty.
Domaine JEAN et GENO MUSSO (Dracy-les-Couches). A new discovery. Certainly
the most unpromising domaine I have been to in all my visits to Burgundy.
First problem: the Mussos are rather difficult to get hold of. They have
a manager, a charming young man called Alain, who can barely write (it was
a big struggle for him to write out my bill). Second: the place is almost
impossible to find. Dracy-les-Couches is nowhere. The region of the Couchois
is quietly tucked away off the beaten Burgundy track. Unlike all the other
parts of Burgundy I visit, where there are signs everywhere directing you
to the domaines, here there is not a single sign. The village sits in the
bottom of a valley, only visible once you get quite close to it. There is
one bar (empty). And a really pretty château, with vineyards behind
and what looked to me like seriously extensive arrangements for storing
wine. It turns out this château is owned by the managing director
of one of the large negociant houses in Beaune.
The village was deserted. I couldn't find the domaine. I asked in the bar,
and eventually found it: a collection of entirely agricultural-looking farm
buildings. Was this really the right place? And then Alain popped out like
a pixie from one of the barns and invited me to go and taste. I hadn't seen
anything that looked remotely like a cellar yet. I conversationally mentioned
that it had been quite difficult to find the domaine - didn't Alain think
it might help to put up signs? No, he replied, if they put up signs they'd
be overrun by visitors!
If this domaine has cellars I never saw them. The wines - bottled, in cask
and in tank - are secreted in various unlikely looking farm buildings around
the village. We started with the Aligoté. I was not hopeful. We were
in one of those sections of a barn where you might keep a calf that has
lost its mother. It was a small space - enough for the half-dozen old oak
casks being stored there. Underfoot was a dirt floor. Alain took out his
pipette and put a shot of wine into each of our glasses. It was delicious:
full, with vivid Aligoté flavour, clean(!) - amazing. Then across
the lane, past some dead, decaying old barrels and into the main section
of another barn through large doors twelve foot high. Inside there is an
enormous metal tank, and an assortment of smaller plastic and resin tanks,
including one shaped like a sausage, on wheels. There is hay and straw everywhere.
Above the huge metal tank hay is stored. All the wines in here are 1998
reds. What are they going to be like? Was the Aligoté just a freak?
The wines are thrilling, brilliant: fresh, vivid, exuberant, clean(again!)
Pinot Noir flavours; the fruit is really pure, clear, well-defined. This
is the kind of Burgundy that makes me want to shout "Eureka".
Alain tells me a bit about the winemaking. I happen to know the domaine
is an organic producer. He talks about their attitude to chaptalisation:
minimal - none if at all possible. I'm sure this in part explains why the
wines have such true, well-defined flavour. I haven't been taking notes
-it all seemed so unpromising. Things were looking exciting now - so exciting
I forgot to start taking notes. I have no notes of my visit here. The wines
in this barn are waiting to finish their malolactic fermentation before
being transferred to oak casks (only old barrels, no new oak here!).
The next surprise: Alain took me off to another section of the original
barn where the 1997 reds were still maturing in cask. Everybody else had
bottled their 97 reds. The received thinking among most winemakers is that
too long in cask dries a wine out and strips it of fruit. We start tasting:
all these wines are as fresh, clean and scrummy as you could possibly hope
for. How do they do it? It is a mystery.
Parenthetically, I will just say that when I went back the next day, Alain
took me to yet another part of the village, where cases of wine, some open,
some missing bottles, were chaotically, anarchically scattered about a hay
barn. This, presumably, is a bottle store.
It is my last visit of the day, and tonight's hotel is a long drive away.
The taste of these remarkable wines stays with me throughout the drive.
I've tasted nothing in bottle, but I decide I have to risk buying some.
* * *
Wednesday night I spent in a hotel just south of Dijon. I had been tasting
all day and arrived around 9 o'clock. I was so tired I failed to notice
the lifesize wooden sculpture in the foyer of a head hunter holding aloft
a severed head as he stood astride the rest of the body. I saw it next morning
as I came down to breakfast. My room had a sort of supercharged electric
heater fixed to the wall right by the bed. There was no switch to adjust
the heat or turn it off. It was so hot I couldn't touch it, or I would have
been tempted to tear it off the wall and disconnect it by brute force. No
amount of open window tempered the heat. I nearly died. I'm not going back
there again.
MORE TO FOLLOW
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