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.

Sunday lunch, 18th July

Last Sunday it was my turn to host lunch. I used the fact that it was my birthday the previous Sunday to justify wheeling out some nice bottles.

While we were waiting for ACC to arrive, G produced this half of Hugel gewurz 1976, which was a different 1976 from the one we'd had at the Savile on Friday - this was the bog standard as opposed to the Selection Personelle. Alsace nerd, moi? It came in a 34cl bottle. G opened and poured, and you can see the colour from the photo, which led to immediate suspicions that it was ferked. One whiff confirmed this - very pungent indeed - and down the sink it went.

Fortunately I hadn't known G was going to produce this, so I'd already chilled a nice half of manzanilla which made a more than acceptable substitute. I note that I'm now down to my last 2 halves of this (when did I buy it? um about 3 weeks ago...) Je ne regrette rien, it has been ideal summer drinking.

For our starter we had some smoked sea trout which G had procured from a stall in Borough Market. It was lovely and went very well with a bottle of Domaine Leflaive bourgogne blanc 2007, which I have blogged about before so will not go into details. ACC provided some welcome expert advice, namely that this wine is not going to get any better, so that means no particular reason to hold onto it - hurrah!

For the main course we had roast fillet of beef which I got from the Ginger Pig, served cold with some salad. ACC had kindly brought along this Auxey-Duresses premier cru from Domaine Roulot 2002. We looked the domaine up in Coates to find that he gives it 3 stars, which is the score he gives "the best" - high praise indeed.

It was a relatively light colour with a slight amber tinge. On the nose it had a lovely, sweet fruit which I found quite heady and intoxicating. On the palate, it was absolutely delicious, and congruent with the nose. Rich and sweet yet light and soft. It reminded me of a red Chassagne, which is possibly my favourite style of Burgundy, very elegant. We all agreed this was a great lunchtime wine.

With the cheese, we had this Nuits St George premier cru Aux Perdrix, from Domaine du Perdrix, 2000. I knew that we'd had this before, but consulting my notes afterwards I was surprised to see it was actually the same vintage we'd had before too! Last time we gave it a 10, but this time it only got a 9.

It was a much darker colour than the Auxey, and on the nose had a lot of dark chocolate, prunes and black cherry. On the palate it was rich, deep, and mellow. I thought it actually had some parallels to the Auxey in its maturity and softness but this was very Cotes de Nuits style (darker flavours and black fruits) whereas the Auxey was very Cotes de Beaune style, lighter and with more red fruits. On this occasion, Roulot came out top - it was lunchtime after all, and qute hot in my flat. In future I should remember to save my C de N monsters for winter evenings!

We rounded off with coffee and a glass of G's mystery madeira which had a Berry Bros & Rudd label. He estimated that it came from the 1930s and was probably a malmsey. There must be a novel to be written about madeira detectives.

Dinner at the Savile, 16th July

Last night G generously hosted a dinner for me and my family at the Savile, to celebrate my birthday which was last Sunday. We brought the wines ourselves, and spent many enjoyable evenings planning exactly what we would have. In the end, all the wines turned out to be French, what a surprise, but I restrained myself on the burgundies as thought it would be fun to have some different things for a change.

We started off in the bar with a bottle of non-vintage Bolllinger rose, which G acquired from our local Unwins when it was closing down, and got it at about half price I believe. Everyone raved about it, and it had a lovely fruit and weight. The perfect start to the evening.

Then we went upstairs to the restaurant and continued proceedings with this 1976 gewurztraminer from Hugel, part of G's Hugel acquisition back at the beginning of the year. It proved very popular and my mother even asked me what it was. As on previous occasions, we found that its age had given it time to mellow and it had become something really interesting.

We followed up with the Hugel riesling 1969 which prompted some humorous comments as this was the year my brother was born. For me, it was less wondrous than the gewurz, but still lovely mature Alsace, and went very well with my marinated mackerel.

Next was an old favourite, the 1999 Vosne-Romanee Clos de Reas from Michel Gros. I've had several bottles of this and it had never failed to disappoint. So it was inevitable I suppose, that the one we had last night with my family wasn't quite as good as the previous bottles. I don't know if it was coming to it after the Alsace wines or what, but I found some strange appley top-notes going on. They diminished with time and with the accompaniment of red meat. G agreed that it wasn't quite what we'd hoped for. Still, that's burgundy for you, you do get these bottle variations.

After that, we moved on to a bottle of 1996 Hermitage La Chapelle from Paul Jaboulet Aine, an iconic wine of the northern Rhone which I love. I bought this bottle after a tasting held by ACC, for no particular reason except that he was offering a good deal on it, and put it on the rack for a rainy day. My family all loved it as I thought they would, particularly my sister-in-law who has dangerously expensive tastes when it comes to this sort of thing. But it would be hard not to like this wine - powerful yet elegant.

We finished off with this Rivesaltes 1982 which G bought from Waitrose It's a 50cl bottle which is a good size, and everyone got a couple of small glasses. A very pleasing dessert wine, not too sweet, which went well with everyone's various puds.

Then it was back downstairs for coffee and brandy for some, and then a whistlestop tour of the club including a very bad performance by me of the Entertainer on the piano in the ballroom. Memo to self: resist the temptation to play the piano after a bottle of wine!

All in all, a very enjoyable evening.

Musings on sherry and other topics

I haven't been drinking all that much lately, partly because I had my annual booze-free week while cat-sitting for my parents, partly because G has made a controversial rule that he's not drinking mid-week unless there's a good reason, and partly because it's just so hot, particularly in my penthouse suite (i.e. 9th floor studio flat).

One thing I have been drinking lately though is halves of manzanilla!

I have Jancis to thank for this discovery. She mentioned this in her FT column a couple of weeks ago, and my quest for sensibly-priced halves of jerez was at an end. This manzanilla from Barbadillo costs £4.45 a half from Waitrose Wine Direct (I haven't seen it in the shop) - click here - and with free delivery (hurrah!), a case of 12 was £53.40 and came within the week. A half bottle is a great size for two or for me by myself over a couple of evenings, and a lovely cold glass goes down a treat at the end of a hard day bean-counting. It's proper manzanilla too, vibrant and zingy, and great with a bowl of olives or pistachios.

While we're on the subject of Jancis, I was recently carrying a cup of tea down the corridor when my chief executive asked me to come into his office. It turned out that he wanted to give me the FT supplement on investing in wine, as I am not only head bean-counter but also in charge of the office cellar. I was heartily amused to read her recommendation that Coche-Dury Bourgogne Blanc was an excellent investment wine. Coche-Dury makes some of the very best white burgundy and the only one I've had (= been able to afford) is his bourgogne, which can to my knowledge only be obtained in minute quantities from a particular restaurant in Beaune with spectacularly customer-unfriendly opening hours. Memo to Jancis: WTF?

However, she hasn't completely lost her marbles, as in addition to the sherry recommendation, it has recently been brought to my attention that she selected Edward Parker Wines (do I get a discount for this shameless plugging, ACC?) as the best wine supplier in an article on her Purple Pages here. Unfortunately one has to fork out £69 a year to subscribe to the Purple Pages so I can't read the whole article, but congrats to EPW in particular for beating Corney and Barrow, one of the top London wine merchants, quite a triumph!

In other news: on Monday we had an office outing to the nearby bowling lanes and afterwards ended up somehow at Fortnums wine bar which I rate highly. Some went for the claret flight while my colleague C and I shared a bottle of gewurztraminer 2007 from Domaine Bruno Sorg. I chose this because back in the day C used to like medium-dry wines such as riesling, and she thought she liked gewurz because she had enjoyed a Paul Cluver gewurz from South Africa. Unfortunately she didn't go for the more full-on style of the Alsace version so I ended up having to take one for the team... shame. Yesterday she gave me a bottle of the Paul Cluver for my birthday, which I am sampling as I write, and I can confirm that it is in a much a drier style. Not bad, especially well-chilled, but slightly bland and more international. Interesting that gewurz can vary so much. NB I see from the website that Fortnums are still offering £10 corkage on the wines from the shop in the wine bar, which is an excellent thing.

On a related note, there's been some press lately about a BYO club in London whereby you pay £75 for a year and can then pay a corkage rate at a number of participating restaurants. A quick look at the club's website here shows that participating restaurants include Club Gascon, Arbutus, Angelus, and various other stalwarts. However, annoyingly, restrictions appear to apply at many of them. All in all, I'm not convinced. The Hawksmoor has been doing £5 corkage on a Monday night for some time now and I still haven't made it - largely because I can go to the Ginger Pig and cook my own steak for about a quarter of the price. Now, if somewhere really fancy like Le Gavroche or the Connaught did corkage, I'd be interested... oh well, am not going to hold my breath!

I've been rather intermittent writing on here of late. In future I'm going to try to write something every weekend - stay tuned!

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.

Domaine Leflaive Bourgogne Blanc 2007

I've been a fan of Domaine Leflaive's bourgogne blanc for a while, and one of my first en primeur purchases was a case of the 2002 which we drank in 2008-09 and which gave great pleasure to all who tried it. So I was thrilled to pick up a case of the 2007 at a recent auction. One tends to think of bourgogne blanc as entry-level stuff, but in the case of Domaine Leflaive this is misleading. This wine puts many premier crus to shame but sadly is priced accordingly - it's going for roughly £35 a bottle according to Wine Searcher. Very nice to get it for considerably less than that!

It turned up in a wooden case which I shall be adding to my collection. Although it's a bit early to be drinking it, we couldn't resist a bottle to see how it was getting on. I was in charge of opening it and narrowly avoided dislocating my shoulder getting the cork out, thereby avoiding a trip to the local A&E. (Time to get a new corkscrew, hint hint G.)

We decanted it about half an hour before drinking. It was a light gold colour. We immediately recognised it on the nose - it's one of those wines which has a unique and distinctive smell, quite lemony and oaky. On the palate, it was lovely - well-balanced, elegant and precise but with considerably acidity. Very Puligny in style, which is to be expected as Domaine Leflaive are one of the top producers in Puligny.

I doubt whether I'll ever be in a position to buy their higher end stuff - a quick check of Corneys website shows that the only wine they have from Leflaive at the moment is a 2008 premier cru Meursault which is going for £60, ouch, so it is a real privilege to drink this. It's the kind of wine that makes me sit there with a silly smile on my face. If it were a premier cru, it would be a high 9, verging on a 10.

It's beginning to drink now but if I have any self-control I ought to pace it over the next 5 years. No more than 2 bottles a year then, for special occasions. Definitely not to be drunk on a Monday night just for the hell of it! But then I would never do anything like that.

Sunday lunch, 6th June

Last Sunday we went over to the Roti in South Kensington for lunch, an establishment which focuses, wisely in my view, on roast chicken. It's under new ownership but I was pleased to see that the fundamentals remained the same - in particular the fact that they do a great deal on corkage.

We were celebrating G's birthday so ACC brought along a couple of fine bottles and G brought along a couple he'd found in Paris. I didn't bring anything but I did pick up the bill.

First up was a bottle of white Cote de Beaune, La Grande Chatelaine 2006 from Giboulot. G got this in Paris and was understandably excited, as Gibbers is top notch booze. I've had the privilege to visit the domaine in Beaune, with ACC and it was one of the best tastings I've been to. He's passionate about his wines, which are biodynamic and made in tiny quantities - there's a sense that they're his babies (similar to Anne Parent) and they have an incredible purity to them. We've only been put off because they're relatively expensive, which is understandable, and being biodynamic you need to decant at least an hour before drinking which is somewhat inconvenient if you come home in need of something NOW after a hard day at the office. But I'm getting to the stage now where I'd rather splash out on something wonderful than have more of something pedestrian.

G's second bottle was a red Santenay from Jean-Claude Belland, Clos des Gravieres 1er cru 2003. ACC told us that Berrys used to sell Belland's stuff, so the fact that G got this in Monoprix did not count against it. It was impressive for a Santenay - not a highly regarded appellation - and a reminder to self that I like the 2003s now (I didn't like them at first but am prepared to admit I was wrong)!

ACC then produced the 2007 Ladoix from Domaine Parent. I was favourably impressed - I liked the jammy fruit - and could be tempted to get some of this in due course.

Finally, ACC wheeled out this Bonnezaux which is a sweet wine from the Loire from Domaine des Gagneries, 1999. He told us that he got this at a very favourable price some years ago and we were privileged to drink the last bottle. Smashing stuff, with good acidity. We didn't have pudding in the end (despite the attractive menu) and it didn't matter as this wine was fine by itself. We agreed that it was a better lunchtime wine than a Sauternes would have been. I haven't had much Bonnezaux but this was a reminder that it's a style I find very appealing.

After this we wandered down the road to the gelateria and then made our way to Carluccios for a digestif (grappa for G, Frangelico for me, and a dodgy Italian brandy for ACC). An great end to an excellent lunch!