Sunday, December 28, 2014

Bourgogne Day 3

Hi all,

Today was a quieter day, given it was Sunday.

The plan was to focus on the southern part, Pommard and Meursault.
On the way to the Chateau de Pommard, which is open non stop all day, and has free tasting, we ended up stopping at the Nuiton-Beaunoy winery and tasting room.

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Sunday

Nuiton-Beaunoy between Beaunes et Pommard

They are next to the highway but while we were there we saw quite a few locals come in and just buy 6+ bottles of wine.
We tried about 10 of their wines. Despite their marketing saying they specialize in Hautes Cotes de Nuits I didn't find that to be true at all.
They will have you try pretty much any of the wines they have on the least, about 25 + wines. We picked and chose and tried some Hautes Cotes, some Village, some 1er Cru and even 2 Grand Cru.
A very nice place to see a large diversity. They are a federation of 88 wine makers so they have a lot of products.
We did leave with 2 of the Grand Cru, 2 of the Monopole they have , 2 1er Cru in White and 2 Monthelie.
Their 2 Grand Cru, both red, are interesting. We loved the Corton but their second one was very animal, very strange, and more expensive (maybe due to its uniqueness).


Chateau de Pommard

 Then we did make it to the Chateau de Pommard. We didn't take the visit but went straight for the wines tasting. It was free and the taster was really nice but he seemed to not care much about order or talking about the wines. He served us straight the 1er Cru they had in White , which we didn't like too much, and then the 2008 Pommard prestige before we could even discuss trying other whites.
We had to discuss a little bit and we setup some tasting order which he then respected.
But overall we didn't buy anything , unfortunately we didn't like the reds ( especially a red had a very strange nose). So overall we were quite disappointed by the Chateau de Pommard wines despite the nice environment.
We then had lunch 2 minutes walking downtown Pommard. We didn't try any more wines there but we had the Delagrange Pommard 1er Cru at the "Le Pommard" restaurant. And we liked this Pommard red so much ( a lot of spices and black fruits) that we left with bottles from the restaurant.


Gauffroy in Meursault

And last but not least today we had an appointment in Mersault, with a Proprietaire-Recoltant , the Gauffroy family, downtown Mersault.

Meursault is extremely charming, authentic and worth a drive around but the construction changed a lot of things and it is very hard to find anything as google is confused on some one way streets.
But we did find it, and Mme Gauffroy , who's father established the winery probably more then 100 years ago, welcomed us. She was extremely friendly and helped us taste their Meursault Village white and red and their Meursault Les Charmes 1er Cru and their 1er Cru in Red also.
We absolutely adored the whites which were extremely cheap (14 euro and 18 euro, so we got 3 of each). The Meursault Village red had an amazing nose but the body at the very end had a little yeast taste I do not like much, so we decided to skip that one, unfortunately.
We talked a lot with Mme Gauffroy , native French helps certainly, and she gave us the inside out of the difference between tastings wines at "negociants" vs " proprietaries-recoltants". Her view was that wines will be much cheaper and better quality when tried and bought at the winery ("proprietaries recoltants) then at the wine merchants ( negociants). Unfortunately given the time of the year most proprietaires are on vacation and so far we only met the 3 :
Natalie Vigot in Vosne Romanee
Fam. Gavinet in Nuits-Saint-Georges
And of course Fam. Gauffroy.
But tomorrow and Tuesday we are doing proprietaires only !

 

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