Savigny-les-Beaune 1er cru La Batailliere Aux Vergelesses 2005, Albert Morot

This premier cru Savigny, a monopole, came from the same auction, along with a couple of premier cru Beaunes.

I had the privilege of visiting this domaine in February 2007 with ACC and H. I remember this trip quite vividly because we missed breakfast that day as the domaine is on the outskirts of Beaune and we had to allow time to find it. I hadn't had any coffee, it was a freezing cold morning, and the chateau initially appeared to be deserted. Not a good start.

But then our host (the impressively named Geoffrey Choppin de Janvry) turned up with his dog in tow and gave us a very classy tasting using Riedel glasses - I've never been to a tasting before or since where they used those! We tasted our way through various 2006 and 2005 premier cru Beaunes and my impression was that these were tannic wines which would need some time to come round, but there was one in particular where I recorded that it was too good to spit out, so I waited till Geoffrey's back was turned and then glugged it, in breach of all tasting etiquette.

So I had high expectations of this wine. We decanted it about half an hour before we drank it, and it had a lovely dark purple colour. But whereas the cask sample of 2006 Savigny which I tasted in 2007 had cherries and raspberries on the nose, here we detected chocolate, blackcurrant and roast meats - more of a claret nose!

On the palate, it was not what I was expecting at all. Savigny is normally quite silky and smooth and relatively fruity, but this was not like that at all. It had monster tannins and not enough fruit to balance them. We had it with a steak, and not even that could make this a wine which was enjoyable to drink. I found it a struggle, and wished I was drinking the village Savigny from Maison Champy instead. I find this very strange, as in the words of the great Anne Parent, the 2005s were wines that "made themselves" and at the tasting I liked the house style.

We looked up the domaine in Clive Coates' book on Burgundy and found that he said the wines were not rich enough for the oak. Now I'm wondering what to do with my two Beaune 2005s - I think they will need to be tucked away and we will have to come back to them in 5 years' time and hope that the tannins have softened by then. I'm not going to write this domaine off just yet.