Bourgogne Grand Ordinaire isn't something you see much of and I've just attempted to find out what the definition is, without much success. Basically it's a mixture of pinot noir and gamay, so it's a bit like a passetoutgrains, but passetoutgrains has to be at least 1/3 pinot, whereas I'm not clear if any such restriction exists for BGO.
Both of these wines came from Domaine Michel Martin, who happens to be the owner of the gite we have stayed in several times in Chorey-les-Beaune. I've tasted there twice and always enjoyed it very much. Monsieur Martin is always twinkly and welcoming and his wines are quite humble but delicious of their type.
Recently I acquired a mixed case of the 2005 and the 2006. The 2006 (on the left) has a vibrant red colour and is smooth, relatively light and very quaffable. My only quibble is that I get a slight stemminess on the finish. However, having been out in Burgundy for the 2006 harvest, we saw that a lot of the grapes were full of rot, so to produce something this good from that vintage is actually quite an achievement.
The 2005 is a darker, murkier, plummy colour. It has perhaps greater intensity and is well-rounded. Weirdly, we've discovered it gets better a day after opening. 2005 was a fabulous year for burgundy so I would predict that the 2005 BGO would beat the 2006, but what is surprising is how good the 2006 actually is.
Label detectives will note that the label underwent quite a transformation between the two years. Think I preferred the old one - the inverse law of labels means that this probably bodes well for the future! Hope he produced some BGO in 2009...
No comments:
Post a Comment