Premier cru project update

I thought it would be interesting (for me, at any rate) to look back over the premier crus drunk so far and see if any patterns emerge.

To begin with, I thought I'd do a simple analysis of the range of scores and average score for the wines we have tasted from each village. I am excluding faulty bottles, but am including duplicates which received separate scores e.g. if we had wine from the same vineyard twice, but from a different vintage or producer as these are useful data. I have excluded Chablis and Montagny because Chablis is really a different project, and Montagny is cheating. The total number of premier cru vineyards in the village is in brackets after its name.

In alphabetical order:

• Aloxe-Corton (14): still to get off the mark
• Auxey-Duresses (9): tasted 2 and both were a 7 so you do the math
• Beaune (41): tasted 17 ranging from 6-10, average 8.8
• Blagny (7): tasted 3 ranging from 7-8, average 7.7
• Chambolle-Musigny (24): tasted 4 ranging from 8-10, average 9.0
• Chassagne-Montrachet (55): tasted 12 ranging from 8-10, average 9.3
• Fixin the drains (5): tasted 3 ranging from 6-8, average 7.3
• Gevrey-Chambertin (26): tasted 8 ranging from 8-10, average 8.8
• Givry (16): still to get off the mark
• Ladoix-Serrigny (12): tasted 5 ranging from 7-9, average 7.6
• Maranges, good with blancmange (7): tasted 2, which got a 7 and a 9, so average is 8.0
• Mercurey (32): tasted 3 ranging from 7-8, average 7.7
• Meursault (25): tasted 6 ranging from 7-10, average 8.5
• Monthelie (12): still to get off the mark
• Morey-St-Denis (20): tasted 6, ranging from 8-9 average 8.5
• Nuits-St-Georges (41): tasted 18 ranging from 6-10, average 8.3
• Pernand-Vergelesses (8): tasted 4 ranging from 6-8, average 7.3
• Pommard (28): tasted 4 ranging from 8-9, average 8.3
• Puligny-Montrachet (24): tasted 7 ranging from 8-10, average 9.1
• Rully (23): tasted 2 ranging from 7-8, average 7.5
• St-Aubin (17): tasted 7 ranging from 7-9, average 7.7
• Santenay (12): tasted 6 ranging from 7-8, average 7.8
• Savigny-les-Beaune (22): tasted 9 ranging from 7-10, average 8.0
• Volnay (36): tasted 12 ranging from 7-10, average 8.4
• Vosne-Romanee (14): tasted 5 ranging from 8-10, average 9.0
• Vougeot (4): tasted 3 ranging from 9-10, average 9.7

Some points to note:

We haven't tried wines from Aloxe, Givry or Monthelie yet, so these must be high priority for searching in future. I have actually been looking out for premier cru Aloxe when in Beaune but I haven't seen it anywhere.

I thought it was quite interesting to include the range of scores, as well as the average. Some villages begin at 8 and scale the giddy heights up to 10 while others begin at a disappointing workaday 7 and go up to a mere pleasing 8. As we get more data these scores will become more reliable, and I will be able to split them into reds and whites within a village, although this will probably only be interesting for Chassagne.

Speaking of which, I still can't quite believe how many premier cru vinyards there are in Chassagne. There was one night we were looking at the yellow book with the maps in it, and suddenly realised there were a whole load on the map that weren't mentioned in the text, which I had used to make my list. I also can't believe how many there are in Mercurey, Givry and Rully, and how little I know about them (I suspect there may be a good reason why...)

At some point, when I have figured out how to paste Excel into Blogger, I want to do an exercise to compare quality with price. The Vougeots, for example, were in the region of £45, whereas many Beaunes are around £30, and much Côte Chalonnaise stuff is below £20. I would be interested to know where can the best value be obtained. But first I need to brush up on my statistics, which are somewhat rusty these days.