Bruno Desaunay-Bissey

On Thursday I was very excited to get the chance to go to an impromptu tasting down in Battersea organised by ACC to try some wines from a producer he has recently found.

I somehow braved the new door entry system and found the new office which was just as full of enticing goodies as the old one used to be, if not more so (marc so he he).

We kicked off with a glass of cremant from Agnes Paquet which was perfectly nice but for me, less interesting than the Dufouleur vintage cremant, of which I'm eagerly awaiting a new delivery of the 2007 and will then blog up.

Then it was onto the reds, which were from Bruno Desaunay-Bissey who is based in Flagey-Echezaux. Flagey is in the heart of the Cote de Nuits, between Vougeot and Vosne-Romanee. The bottles we tried were all from the 2008 vintage.

First we had a village Chambolle-Musigny, which had a vibrant nose and was quite light, soft and elegant on the palate. We thought it would be drinking in about 2 years, so one wouldn't need to wait too long. A bit of a crowd-pleaser I would say. Am seriously considering treating myself to a 6 pack.

Consulting the excellent maps in Coates, I see that Combe d'Orveau, the vineyard, is right on the Flagey border, and part of the vineyard is classified as premier cru, although not this particular part. I smuggled the rest of the bottle home with me so here's a photo, showing a traditional style label. Also, it's only 12.5% alcohol which is a plus point as far as I'm concerned.

After that there were two premier cru Vosne-Romanees, one was Les Rouges and the other I can't remember as I've somehow managed to lose my tasting notes, duh! Was it Les Beaux Monts? Les Rouges had a lot of red fruit although as ACC said this might be purely suggestive as a result of the name - he got raspberry, while N and I got redcurrant. The other one was more typique, with darker fruits and more power and richness, and would probably need 4 years or so to come round.

Finally we moved on to a pair of grand crus, a real treat for me as I very rarely get to drink anything at this level. We had an Echezeaux and a Grand-Echezeaux. N turned to vintage car analogies at this point and suggested (I hope I got this right) that the Echezeaux was like an old Bentley while the Grand-Echezeaux was like something sleeker. Certainly it was a delight to drink, with all the qualities of elegance, finesse, and structure in place, and while I'm wary of acquiring a Grand-Echezeaux habit, it's very tempting to get a bottle, tuck it away in a safe place and come back to it in 10 years. This is the highest level of red burgundy, and the price seemed very reasonable considering that. All in all, an excellent addition to the EPW portfolio of producers.