Grand Tasting 2008

Olivier Guyot

Le Grand Tasting, Paris
These huge and serious tasting-events are always intimidating and I have always mixed feelings before going, but as soon as you pass door, the magic and thrill of the wine is there again. As I said in my wine-events page, this is a serious wine event, but the selection is rigorous and two days wouldn't be enough to cover all the event, considering the invited-wineries list. We spent almost an entire day there and while I think we made the best use of our time, we still stopped at a small number of stands, plus we didn't to my shame got the time to visit at least a few Italian and Spanish stands. We can't but chat with the vintners and we would miss the point if we just hurriedly went from stand to stand with barely a word to the vigneron.
We spent some time tasting Olivier Guyot who had only reds to taste. He said he also makes 2000 bottles of rosé, plus some Chardonnay on Marsannay. At one point, Olivier Guyot told us they were 8 brothers and sisters in his family, his parents wanting a large family...
__Olivier Guyot, Bourgogne Pinot-Noir 2006. Served a bit too warm, but still tastes well.
__Olivier Guyot, Marsannay la Montagne 2006. high-elevation climat shared by 4 vignerons. Exposed on south. Limestone soil where the vines suffer, makes beautiful wines usually. It should be upgraded to 1er Cru some day. There are whites on this climat too. Beautiful nose and mouth here.
__Olivier Guyot Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Charmes 2006. Very nice, classy wine. Mouth with ampleness, a pleasure, no spit. 14-16 months elevage in 100% new casks. No hint of wood here. Lots of whole clusters here he says. He uses only François-Frères casks, like Frédéric Magnien.
Olivier Guyot Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru les Champeaux 2006. 50% new casks, 50% one-year old. From the oldest vineyard of his estate, one hectare and 95-year-old vines. Served a bit too warm too but what a pleasure...
__Olivier Guyot, Clos Saint-Denis Grand Cru 2006. 100% new casks. Elegant but its tannins ask for more time.
__Olivier Guyot, Clos de la Roche Grand Cru 2006. Three casks on good years. From a 3-hectare climat shared by many vignerons.

Champagne Duval-Leroy Cuvée des Rois 1985 Of course, we began with Champagne...
__We began with Duval-Leroy's Extra Brut, 100 Chard with a base of 2002 wine and 2 grams of dosage (Extra Brut is less than 6 gr). Nice bubbles. 45 Euro.
__Authentis Clos des Bouveries 2002, 100% Chard, Brut (less than 12 gr).60 Euro.
__Femme de Champagne 1996, a magnim, 79% Chard, 21% Pinot Noir. On the market since a year and a half. Very nice, straight mouth. 220 Euro (magnum).
Cuvée des Rois 1985 (picture), a magnum too. That's a nice Champagne... refined, blond tobacco aromas. 220 Euro for the magnum.
Next, we went to Gosset.
__Champagne Grande Reserve. Wines from 2002, 2003, 2004. Dosage : 8/10 gr. Perfect balance with intensity in the mouth. Mostly Chard and Pinot Noir, with a bit of Pinot Meunier. A bit of sucrosity in the mouth. 36 Euro.
Champagne Grand Millesime, 1999, 40% Chard, 60% P.N., dosage 8/10 grams. Nice balance in the mouth too. Lots of substance, this is a gastronomy Champagne. Ampleness, you just munch this Champagne, B. says. They don't make millesime Champagne every year. The last previous was 1996.
Champagne Celebritis Vintage Extra Brut, 1998. Gosset's tête de cuvée., 40% Chard, 60% P.N., dosage 3,5 gr. Béatrice Cointreau who heads Champagne Gosset chose a low dosage here because she felt it was largely enough. Very nice mouth with a long, lingering mouth feel. My preferred Champ at this stand, in addition to the Grande Reserve (the 1st). 110 Euro.
__Champagne Grand Rosé. Same base than Grande Reserve plus red wine. Not really easy to taste this wine after the Celebritis 1998. 44,45 Euro.
At Jacquesson, we tasted among several Champagne wines the Cuvée 731, the emblematic cuvée of the Maison, which is on the market since a couple of weeks. This year, it is made with a base of 2005 (80%). Very pleasant nose of ripe grapes, dry raisin, even Xeres, B. says.This Maison is known to use foudres (large capacity casks) systematically for its wines. We learnt that Jacquesson invented the metal capsule stopper and wire to hold Champagne corks in 1844. This page listing Champagne-related inventions mentions it.
We also tasted a few Champagne wines at Moutardier, a Maison producing 280 000 bottles a year from its own 18 hectares (14 ha Pinot Meunier - 4 ha Pinot Noir & Chard) and purchased grapes.The one that took my attention was a 100% Pinot Meunier which was not listed. No label yet as it is not on the market. Made with 2006/2005/2004 wines. Its name will be "Pur Meunier". 2500 bottles of it only. Nice, neat mouth. Probably priced about 20 Euro. Wine-pairing workshop treatOne of the high points of the Grand Tasting are the Ateliers (workshops), and we got the luck to be chosen at random by the organisation staff to fill the gaps on the seats around the horseshoe table of an Atelier Gourmet.That's one of the reasons we didn't taste as many wines as we wanted to : we had just finished tasting Champagne were resting a couple of minutes while pondering whee to go next, when we were called on duty by this blond woman to attend a wine-paring workshop. Good timing, we were a bit hungry as Champagne had opened our appetite. Suprême de volaille de Challand farci aux cornes d'abondance rôti, légumes retouvé mijoté au Lirac. Don't try to understand the dish, just figure the smell... These worshops have you see the Chef prepare the dish, explain the hows and whys and introduce the wine chose as a nice match for a particular dish. The Chef was Pascal Bataillé of Pierre-au-Palais-Royal, the director of which, Eric Sertour, also explained his motives and culinary ideas.The featured wine was from Domaine de la Mordorée,a Côtes-du-Rhône/Chateauneuf-du-Pape estate, the owner of which was also present (his wine list seems quite good, if short and a bit pricey).I won't reproduce all my notes, there'd be quite enough content for a full post, but you get deep into the recipe and Chef's tips as well as into the wine's understanding and why it suits particularly this dish.The chicken has been cooked on an automnal manner, first lightly grilled in a pan with foie gras, then with mushrooms and ancient vegetable varieties, with Lirac red wine. Pascal Bataillé, the chef says that the foie-gras/mushrooms-side will be balanced by the acidity of the Lirac red. He took off some of the grease of the foie-gras that surfaced during the cooking, keeping the best of it in the pan. The chicken-dish is welcome, here we are seating and being served by a chef, with a wine specially selected to pair it...the red la-Mordorée Lirac-wine is actually more open after a few minutes and I appreciate it more while in the middle of my dish. Christophe Delorme of la Mordorée says that the Syrah goes well with the automnal style of the dish. Sichuan-cuisine wine match Believe it or not, we were both chosen again to attend another Atelier Gourmet later in the day. I think the PR woman saw us take notes and pictures on the first workshop and figured we were attentive attendees. So, here we are sitting among other guests again for a Sichuan-cuisine wine-paring workshop. First, let me tell you that we were impressed by these two Sichuan dishes. The Chef in charge was Andy Shan from Au Bonheur du Palais, a Chinese restaurant in Bordeaux, and I praise Andy and Tommy Shan (who explained his work) for having put the Sichuan cuisine on the map for us. Tommy Shan is a Chinese restaurateur whose passion for wine can be read on his own words on his website, and it would translate like, China sees an emerging generation of passionnate wine lovers, his restaurant making a point to match great white wines (les Grands Blancs) to Sichuan Cuisine. Mr Shan is going to steam-cook two chicken dishes, one will be with white Sichuan pepper and the other with garlic and ginger. Let me say that these small dishes were just delicious, lightly-spicy and so fresh at the same time. Tommy Shan had selected white wines for the dishes : the first dish (the one on the left) will be given a Riesling from Domaine Paul Zinck, a wine with a nice minerality, purity, flowers and citrus aromas. A feminine wine, says the vigneron who is present to speak about the wine. Pairs well with the lemon-peel and also with what seems to be sesame-oil but is actually peanut oil with ginger, pepper and chilli-pepper oil. The dish on the right needs a Gewûrztraminer. Typical Gewûrz nose with a nice sucrosity in the mouth. The vigneron himself tastes along us and feels relieved, the balance is good, you can get a piece of the particularly-aromatic dish with its suprising asian flavors and get back to the wine without a hitch, it helps highlight the citrus side of the wine. Mr Shan even takes time to explain the art of preparing the boom-boom chicken, first tendering the meat with a knife's handle and putting it in a sauce made with crushed sesame, soya, rice vinegar and Sichuan pepper (known for its anaesthetic properties). Teaching the right values to the next generationAs you can see on this picture with a young child in the arms of her father, there is still some hope on the wine-vs-anti-alcohol-lobbies front in France (they want to bar free-tastings, and most wine tastings are free in France). The good news is that I saw quite a good number of parents with very young children at the Grand Tasting and this was heartening to see babies with their eyes wide open, immersed in this new life experience. Some parents could be seen resting a few minutes in the hall to give the baby feeder to their little one before going back to the stands.
The younger you bring your children to wine tasting, the deeper the cultural imprint on their soul. Remember, like the music, get them accustomed very early to the heavenly waves of wine scents and rejoicing adults chatting about great wines...
And speaking of the hostile climate for the wine culture in France, be patient, these Victorian anti-alcohol groups will be defeated, dissidents are patiently at work behind the scenes. And consider that the dry lobby isn't the only guilt-based ideology that we are confronted to, here in France. Like everywhere else in the Western Hemisphere we have also to endure the flat-earthers of global-warming and carbon-footprint, chanting everyday the end of the world is nigh... Marcel DeissThis was the end of our tasting tour, we decided to taste a few Alsace wines by Marcel Deiss. That's when the Chinese restaurateur Tommy Shan dropped there for a second (his finger-pointing hand is on the right). The restaurant of Tommy and Andy Shan in Bordeaux makes a good place to Alsace wines, and Deiss wines are on the list, along with Trimbach, Albert Mann, Weinbach, Ostertag . That's amazing how Alsace has good matching-properties with asian cuisine, I thought it was partly a conventional approach, people liking easy categorizing instead of having to search individually the right food-wine match, but the fact is, more than often, an Alsace wine will be chosen for this exotic cuisine because it just fits well. At the restaurant, they chose these five estates for another good reason, it is that they all make wines with different style and personality : Trimbach wines will be more dry and mineral, Deiss is something entirely apart with its terroir- Grand-Cru wines, Albert Mann wines which are particulary refined and elegant... I spoke to Hélène Yuan, who is the sommelier in charge at au Bonheur du Palais, and she says that Deiss wines offer a complexity due to the fact that different grape varieties are complanted on the same vineyards and vinified together, making wines that fit with the complex and surprising aromas of Sichuan cuisine. The complanted grapes will express more the terroir than the grape variety. They began with three Alsace wines in the beginning and she later added Marcel Deiss and Albert Mann. Alsace is the Appellation of choice, be it Riesling with its minerality and freshness or Pinot's strong structure in the mouth, without an excessive aromatic presence which could imbalance the pairing, and the Gewürztraminer which goes well with certain spices like badiane (star anise) or ginger. But they also explored elsewhere and their wine list has expanded beyond Alsace with one goal, make it along Chinese cuisine. She says that the clientèle in Bordeaux responds well to the choice of Alscace wines and many btw accept to be guided by the sommelier for the choice of a particular wine to go with their Chinese dish. Jean-Luc Thunevin and Ishizuka MorieWe stopped at Jean-Luc Thunevin's stand to taste a few wines beginning with Thunevin-Calvet Cuvée Constance 2006, a pleasant Grenache- Syrah- Carignan wine with roundness in the mouth. Well noted by Parker, says Jean-Luc Thunevin. Labelled as Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes. 7 Euro. The second wine was a Côtes du Rousillon Villages Calvet-Thunevin 2005, a rather nice wine and relatively low-priced (25 Euro) for the quality, but with too much extraction for my taste. The third was Bordeaux Bad Boy 2005, a red wine made from en-fermage (not owned) vineyards (13 ha) on the right bank in the Libournais. 100% Merlot, 100% new casks. 14,5°. Mouth a bit too warm, I would say. Bad Boy is the nickname Robert Parker gave to his friend Thunevin. 15 Euro. We tasted 4 other wines but I didn't write much details on my notes. The last wine took my attention, it was Saint-Emilion Grand-Cru Valandraud 2006, a beautiful red wine full of promises if you have the patience to keep it some time in your cellar. And if your pocketbook can afford it : 200 Euro apiece...
As we were tasting the wines, a Japanese restaurateur and friend of Jean-Luc Thunevin dropped by : Ishizuka Morie is a former sommelier who runs with a Japanese staff le Petit Verdot (Petit Verdot is a Bordeaux grape variety and it also sounds in French like "petit verre d'eau" or "small glass of water"), a restaurant serving traditional French cuisine with of course a Japanese touch. As a former sommelier, Mr Ishizuka has worked out a wine list of his own that I'd like to experiment the day we go there.
We tasted wines at several others stands but I lack room and in some instances, notes, to write about it.

Comments

[Steve L.]

This may be the most poetic and evocative reference to wine I've seen in a very long time: "heavenly waves of wine scents and rejoicing adults chatting about great wines..." I'm afraid you might characterize me as a "flat-earther" if by that you mean someone who believes it's quite possible that human activity has caused significant climate change. (I like my Chablis at 12.5% alc., not over 13.5%!)

[Bertrand]

The problem is, the world has always changed, and sometimes dramatically fast, Steven. The idea that some immobile weather patterns are here for ever is illusory (that's what I mean by flat-earher mentality). I feel that when people begin to see the world through this guilt prism, there's no end to it. Tomorrow they'll ask to cull all the cows because of the huge volume of methane that they release... We humans sure play a role but many other factors play a role like the Pinatubo eruption or solar radiation.
Some scientists even said recently that we could be heading fast to an ice age...I follow you on the 12,5° Chardonnay of course, and if the ice age loiters on the way, we might have to plant vineyards up north...

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