Tasting Philippe Pacalet 2007 reds

A lively Pinot Noir flows into our glassesBeaune, Burgundy
As B. and I we were around Beaune recently, we paid a visit to Philippe Pacalet, not that we unashamedly disturb him every time we pass by, but B. wanted to buy a few bottles of his red Burgundies and he kindly invited us to taste several of his 2007 reds, which are still spending elevage time in their casks. There has been some speculations about what 2007 would look like and while barrel tasting is not easy, we were eager to have a foretaste of this millesime. Philippe Pacalet says that in 2008 the harvest began september 20th for "his" vineyards (as you know, he doesn't own vineyards but rents them) and lasted until october 5th, with an interruption of 2 or 3 days in between. It used to be that the harvest began early september, but the weather conditions forced them to wait, which puts the already-scheduled tasting events of october at a time when he should still be at the winery to check the unfinished fermentations. In 2008, the harvest began september 20th when in 2007 it was the 5th. Oddly, this year he was one of the earliest to harvest. He made Primeur wine (Nouveau) again like these past 5-6 years with his uncle Marcel Lapierre on a few Beaujolais vineyards that they take together for this small production, which is entirely exported to Japan. We don't taste these Beaujolais this time because they're already bottled and packed on pallets bound for Japan. But I remember when we tasted last year's that I loved these three, very-different Beaujolais-Nouveaux. This year the trick was that the malolactic fermentation was over on a friday and they had to do the bottling the following tuesday.

In front of his 3 white Nuits-Saint-Georges (Pinot Blanc)We first have a look at the separate white-wines cask room whith the 2008 wines, which is on the street level. Its temperature is regulated and kept at something like 18°C [picture on left]. One of the new vineyards that he recently added to his "portfolio" was a small surface of white Nuits-Saint-Georges, and he made these 3 casks out of it. White Nuits-Saint-Georges is a rarity which is often unknown to wine amateurs. It is made either with Chardonnay or with Pinot Blanc, and this white Nuits-St-Georges makes barely 2% of the Appellation's output. This white happens to be Pinot Blanc, which makes it even more a coveted rarity.
Speaking of rented vineyards, Philippe Pacalet says that the word rent is used for convenience but he actually pays for the harvested grapes and like everywhere in the region the fee is calculated as if he took in the highest yields allowed for the region, which he of course never does. He regularly gets new vineyard plots while he lets others go, for reasons like the prices tend to soar excessively. The steep price hike is because the Négoce lobbied to inflate the prices, the goal being to get rid of smaller structures, and even if he is not particularly targeted by the move, he has to adapt. Just consider that the prices for purchased grapes went up 40% in 2 years on some Meursaults and 1ers Crus, the average hike being 25% to 30%, and as he pointed out, he has to pay for 49 hectoliters per hectare in the villages Appellations even if he takes in only 35ho/ha. Plus, on the last three years it was more 30-hectoliter than 35-hectoliter per hectare, with the stretched flowering of the vines, because they couldn't pick as much as they would have liked.Nicolas Luquet and Philippe Pacalet in the cellarPhilippe Pacalet also found a Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru vineyard to rent (to buy the grapes from). He says that looking for vineyards and negociating for the rent makes up 30% of his work time. The people who let the vineyards are owners who are not vignerons themselves, for example his Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru (35 ares) is owned by a SNCF (French Railways) employee who works and hand-plows himself the vineyard on his free time. About the Nuits-Saint-Georges' Pinot Blanc that he began to rent this year, he thought he would make 5 or 6 casks but he got less volume than anticipated. The grapes were not big this year, like it happened in 1988 and 1998, lots of Millerands. Millerandage is when the grapes don't reach their maturation, because of late flowering or bad weather early in the season for example. His Pinot-Blanc plot surface in Nuits-Saint-Georges is less than 0,5 hectare, maybe 0,4 hectare. The authorized yields there is 55hectoliter/hectare but he makes barely half of that. The usual arithmetic is : for a 35-hectoliter/hectare yield, you get 15 casks per hectare, so you can have an idea of the very low yields that he picked here (3 casks for 0,4 hectare).Give me a good reason why this cask should have my wine back...Philippe Pacalet gets a few glasses and we walk down to the cellar with Nicolas Luquet, who assists as chai master in the winery. He will choose several wines to taste from the casks while Pacalet settles a few things in his office. We briefly met Nicolas at each of our previous visits but in these occasions he was busy doing the important every-day tasks of the winery. Once in the cellar, he explains that some of the 2007 reds we're about to taste from the caks have been lightly stirred a while ago. They have neared the end of their elevage and a few of them will be racked maybe end of november. He reminds that they discontinued working with some vineyard plots, like for example when they centralized their cellars and chais in the Beaune facility (before that, they had to run between 3 or 4 locations in the region), they didn't keep the arrangements with the Domaine Sabre thanks to which they could have a couple of casks of Beaune 1er Cru 'les Chouacheux". By chance, as they let go les Chouacheux, they met someone from les Hospices de Beaune who told them that one of his vignerons had a Beaune-1er-Cru plot that he could let in part. This vineyard is located on the other side of the Beaune area from Les Chouacheux, nearly at the other end of the Appellation. They made 5 casks from these purchased grapes. While les Chouacheux is at the bottom of the slope on a gravelly soil close to Pommard and Clos des Mouches, this other Beaune plot is on a steep slope, with a result not that different in terms of wine style. They made their last Chouacheux in 2007 and this other Beaune 1er Cru followed suit in 2007.Aerating the wine in the mouthSpeaking about the several locations they had to commute to and work in, Nicolas Luquet remembers that they had a cluster of rented cellars in Vezelay, where they had up to 200 casks at one point. As Nicolas was doing much of the work regarding the handling of the casks, he appreciates the easier ergonomy of this unified facility, which has even the luxury of being equipped with a heavy-duty service elevator.
Back to the wines : these 2007 reds have been lightly stirred recently : they scrapped (gratter in French) the bottom of the cask with a tool, to move the lees a bit. This was just before the harvest for the earliest. Because the lees have settled and the wine hasn't finished its elevage yet, they move them to further the lees/wine exchange for a couple more months. They use a dodine for that (a stirring stick), to just scrap a bit the bottom of the cask. Before this light stirring, the last time the wines were moved was when the casks were rolled into this main cask cellar last march. There's an interesting story about this rolling of the casks : It happened to be a necessity imposed by the cellar layout when they shared Michel Couvreur's cellar (Michel Couvreur is a Belgian-born négociant known for his high-end whiskies) in Bouze-les-Beaune : they vinified at their Gevrey location at the time and subsequently moved the casks to Bouze, rolling literally the casks to a truck and then again from the truck down to Michel Couvreur's cellar. This operation, which was sort of imposed by their distant and stretched facilities, happened to perform well in the wine, so Philippe Pacalet wanted to keep this rolling-of-the-casks stage even though everything was now centralized in Beaune. He had already noticed the benefits of such cask rolling when he was working at the Romanée Conti with Mr Roch, as they also used to roll the casks accross the village after the agreement was obtained to have them spend their elevage time in another cellar.The main cellarSpeaking of the 2008 red wines for example, they are now in their casks in a side room adjacent to the main cellar room and when the the 2007 wines (still in casks now) will be racked before the bottling in the first months of 2009, the 2008 casks will be rolled to this main romm for the last part of the elevage, and this simple, non-intrusive rolling process will mix again the lees with the wine. These are the only instances when the wine is moved, otherwise it just makes quietly its way in the casks. When the end of the elevage nears, Philippe and Nicolas taste at a higher frequency all the casks, and they already have begun now. On maybe 10% of the casks if the result is not fully satisfying either because of the excessive wood or any other reason, they jump on the opportunity that another casks has been emptied (for bottling for example) to transfer the given wine in the just-emptied cask to have it end its elevage in a different container. They usually keep some lees from the former wine so that it gets a beneficial correction from them.
Let's taste the wines :
__Philippe Pacalet, Gevrey-Chambertin 2007. Nice color , lightened by turbidity. Nose : already opened, camphor aromas. Fruits, Morello cherry, some pepper. Fresh and vivid in the mouth. B. smells some incense in her emptied glass. Nicolas Luquet says "now comes the best time to taste the wines in the casks, after more than a year of elevage, the best moment being when the wines are racked before bottling". He says with a smile that for each cask, the last couple of buckets fill slowly drop by drop and tasting this wine that was so close to the lees is a priviledged pleasure... For the information, they fill a vat with two casks at a time and lift this vat upstairs with the service elevator, where it is lifted with a self-propelled elevator above the blending vat so that the wine gets racked by gravity. The vinification room with the open-top tronconic vats__Philippe Pacalet, Pommard 2007. Lightly stirred at the end of the harvest, more recently than the Gevrey. Some gaz but overall I like this nose, there's a sea of promises behind this lactic aroma. B. says it is still closed. Ampleness inthe mouth. B. notes the neat tannins. Nicolas says that he noticed in earlier years that this wine goes through a warmer, alcohol phase during this phase of its elevage, and it always gains back its freshness and fruit after a while. We digress again on the 2008 harvest which was not easy, but he jokes that these difficult years make beautiful wines too, they just endure more suspense along the way.
__Philippe Pacalet, Nuits-Saint-Georges 2007. Stirred before the harvest. Expressive, nice aromatic structure. Nice Pinot-Noir nose, with pepper. Floral, peony nose, says B.
__Philippe Pacalet, Pommard 1er Cru. Darker color. 4 casks of this wine. Intensity in the mouth. Well structured. B. notes the nice end of the mouth, with floral, encense aromas. They had originally a Premier Cru "les Chanlins" and since 2006 they have also this vineyard, "les Arvelets". Philippe Pacalet comes back from the office, he says he just received an English-written letter from a Canadian import company to which he sold several cases of Meursault, they wanted him to send back a signed statement, a sort of guarantee against whatever could happen to the wine, which he considers a vague notion which opens the way to an excessive leverage by the buyer. He says he refuses to sign such letters which amount to blank checks as they could virtually oblige him to take the wine back if the labels are scratched or the bottles mishandled. He sells his wines "départ de cave" at the winery's door, and if buyers use the right transport and take care of the wines they have no worry to have. Our conversation digresses about another wine importer (who didn't ask for such a signed statement), Joe Dressner, and his dog Buster...Fiber-resin vats__Philippe Pacalet, Chambolle Musigny 1er Cru 2007. Very nice nose. Pacalet says that it is not ready yet, that it feels like limestone at the end. Nice aromas of blueberry, tobacco.
__Philippe Pacalet, Gevrey Chambertin 1er Cru Bel Air 2007. Cask #103. Clear ruby. Nose : beeswax, encense says B. Philippe Pacalet says that in the early months this wine tastes always as if diluted, it needs time to take its place, it is a special wine in this regard. The vineyard is on the east, on a cold, rocky soil, with lots of minerality. Ruchottes (the climat) is nearby but on the south-east, on a gentler slope with a soil which is more debris and earth than rock. Bel Air is steep. There's a small but passionate following for Bel-Air wines among wine amateurs.
__Philippe Pacalet, Charmes-Chambertin 2007. Another beautiful Pinot-Noir nose, pepper. Small red fruits. Pacalet notes the rose aroma too. B. likes its "dodu", fleshy feel in the mouth. Joyous feel in the mouth. Pacalet's reds are always vinified whole-clustered, no detail is made, he considers that the stem is part of the process and brings a basis and the necessary substance, of course it implies more work including in the vineyard and you can't cheat when you don't destem. Also the whole clusters take more volume in the vinification vats, which is why many vignerons decided to destem to avoid having to buy more vats. In the vat room Pacalet digresses about what he tasted recently from the 2008 wines in the next cask room, there will be very good surprises. He hears people, including professionals saying disparaging generalities about such or such year, like 2008 was awful and the wines should be disregarded. He says that Pinot Noir doesn't need a hot summer to make a beautiful wine and the Burgundy's weather hasn't to be the same as in the south of France otherwise they sould have planted Mourvèdre instead of Pinot. He is btw surprised that even with the light summers that they had recently in the region, some Burgundy wineries produce a dark, concentrated Pinot Noir. Their official explanation for these dark wines is their very low yields but he has a hard time to understand how even, say, a 12 ho/ha-yield could make a Pinot that dark, there may be some other little-publicized intervention like reverse osmosis or use of tannin additives here. Taking into account that all these wineries destem their grapes, it is even harder to understand how they can make such super-tannic wines in these years...
__Philippe Pacalet, Ruchottes Chambertin 2007. The wine was transferred in another cask (but with its own lees). Philippe Pacalet notes that the move was already beneficial for the wine, from what he tastes now. There has been a positive protein/tannins exchange between the wine and the lees. It brings a freshness and fixes the aromas, with the additional benefits of a proteinic stability, which makes a very stable mouthfeel accross time. I love its nose. Blueberry, blackcurrant, amber. Long mouthfeel.Bouilland. A beautiful and quiet valley north of Beaune After B. chooses her order, Philippe Pacalet tips us about a very beautiful valley very close from Beaune. This picture of mine is a very timid rendering of the pure beauty and quietness of this place, a magnificient narrow road going up to the mountainous heights and bordered with woods, prairies with cows, farms and isolated villages. Starting from Savigny-les-Beaune near Beaune, this Burgundy itinerary which drives along the Rhoin stream and valley through Bouilland [picture above], Antheuil and down to another valley where the Canal de Bourgogne flows, is a fairy tale of rustic rurality. Taking side roads to other villages like Crepey, Bruant, Détain-et-Bruant and Gergueil will offer to the isolated visitor an unforgettable experience, much more authentic than window-shopping the tourist wine-shops of Beaune. Philippe Pacalet used to drive through it as his cellar shared with Michel Couvreur was close from there in Bouze-les-Beaune, and he says there are a lot of wild animals crossing the roads there. Philippe Pacalet12 rue de Chaumergy 21200 Beaunephone : +33 3 80 25 91 00fax : +33 3 80 22 46 18email : philippe.pacalet [at] wanadoo [dot] fr

Comments

[Steve L.]

Thanks for the insight concerning "rented" vineyards and rolling casks. (Hmm--I wonder, which wines did B. select?)

[Bertrand]

Thanks Steve;
B. bought 6 Pommard 1er Cru 2006, 6 Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru and a magnum (the last one !) of Ruchotte-Chambertin 2006. We tasted them last year in the casks and she wanted to have them in the cellar.

[Mart]

Hi Bert,

I was in a hurry but was 'out of the hurry' as soon as i started reading about Pacalet. I have a few bottles of some Sabres he made (only 3 :-( ) bit out of my scope budgetwise but i sometimes have the pleasure (or delight) to taste his wines. Nice story and thanks for the last tip, i may visit France beginning of next year and hope to visit Bourgogne (and some of my favorite Beaujolais producers, btw they seem to tame their wines down a bit don't they? Except Metras maybe)
Anyway you probably know of the existence of this but just mention it, you might be able to sneak in a visit next year. I thought it was rather enjoyable, it is difficult to find good (natural or whatever it is called nowadays) wines in Italy http://www.vinidivignaioli.com/

Regards,

Mart

[Bob Keay]

I have in my posession two bottles left to me by my brotherinlaw after he unfortunately passed away.
Both are labeled Michel Couvreur and one is a Pommard Premier Cru Epenots 1980 and the other is a Chateauneuf-Du-Pape Chateau Rayas. I know little about wine but hold onto because of their sentimental value. What can you tell me about them and is time they were poured?

Bob-Canada