Berrys' Wine Blog
The closest link between the people that make wine and the people that drink it
Last week we had the opportunity to sample a range of 1990s in Berrys’ Long Room (left), which confirmed the reputation of the vintage. Enhanced it even! The evening was mostly about Burgundy, albeit sandwiched between some white Bordeaux wines, Domaine de Chevalier and Laville Haut-Brion at the front and a youthful Yquem to complete the evening.
While Jasper was in town last week we managed to grab a few minutes with him to talk about his thoughts on the ‘08 Burgundy en primeur campaign in Asia:
After a fantastic few days with Jasper in town, Nick Pegna, Managing Director of BB&R HK (and my boss!), gives his thoughts on the events that took place.
“We have just dispatched Jasper Morris MW, our Burgundy Buyer, back to his home in the Côtes of Burgundy, having completed our second Burgundy Week in Hong Kong. The week, which consists of master classes, interviews, dinners and tastings included the first tasting in Hong Kong of the 2008 Burgundies en primeur (and perhaps the first Burgundy primeurs tastings in Asia – left) as well as a thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable look at the 1996 vintage of Domaine de la Romanee Conti, at a dinner organised in conjunction with American Express for 15 people last Friday night.
On Wednesday we held our annual Burgundy en primeur tasting, where Jasper and his producers got the chance to show off their 2008s to the eagerly awaiting public (and press!)
In between pouring and note-taking, we managed to catch a few words with Jasper and Benjamin Leroux, to talk about 2008 as a vintage:
We also managed to catch eRobert Parker’s Neal Martin on his way out to see what his thoughts were after having tasted the best part of 109 perky barrel samples:
I find this time of year the toughest by far… Burgundy En-Primeur. It is a living hell, where I am waking up in cold sweats and arguing with my colleagues. No this is not a complaint about how busy I am but the problem all Burgundy ‘nuts’ have…what on earth do I buy this vintage?!
Despite the title, we haven’t entirely given up wine for the New Year. Wine Matters has, however, just finished Guardian wine writer Victoria Moore’s new book ‘How To Drink’ and what an interesting read it was too. One of the highlights, of course, was a mention of our very own Jasper Morris MW who, as well as being a wine connoisseur (and our Burgundian buyer) is also something of a tea aficionado. Here’s a snippet from the book:
Phew! I have been flat out working on our 2008 Burgundy Offer which opens on January 5th, so have had no time to blog, tweet, twitter or scratch my nose for the past few weeks. All is done now so normal life can resume. The 2008s were not easy to taste earlier in the year because the malolactic fermentations were late, and you can’t make sense of a wine until that is done and dusted and the wines have had a chance to settle down again afterwards – which by late November they had.
Here in Basingstoke we are lucky enough to receive a host of prominent visitors and today was the turn of the amiable Nicolas Potel, who came to talk to us about his wines (some from Maison Potel - mainly the ’06s, and lots of ’07s from his private venture, Domaine Potel), as well as the changes that have occurred in his business over the recent months. He took a bit of time out from showing his wines and answering staff’s questions to shoot this short video explaining what he’s been up to:
You can read a bit more about Nicolas in this article in the most recent Wine Spectator.
It has been a remarkably fine and easy to manage harvest in Burgundy.
The sun is still shining and the grapes are in. It wasn’t a doddle all summer long, mind you, as tricky weather conditions in the first half of July required careful management in the vineyard. But August was a perfect summer month, with day after day of warm sunny weather, without any exaggerated heat spikes, and though September was cooler and a little greyer, the rains held off and the crop was brought in.
Spending so much of my time in Burgundy has many, many advantages, not least the beautiful scenery, the relaxed way of life and my (wife’s) horse, Hengist. But it does mean that I miss out on technological developments somewhat. As a result, I have only just discovered ‘Twittering’ and have been debuting my tweets (@justjasper) during the recent harvest here in Burgundy.
In doing this I was also reminded that I had taken some videos of producers and vineyards in May and found it fascinating to compare their predictions on the vintage to the harvest we’ve just had – some were spot on! Here is a video of me talking to Etienne de Montille at Ch. de Puligny, but there are plenty more on our YouTube channel, including one of the vineyard at Montrachet and a brief look at the old wine press at Maison Drouhin.
As I looked out of my window yesterday morning, everything seemed perfect – as expected it was one of the hottest days of the year at around 35c and, so far, August has been absolutely delightful. There was enough rainfall early in the year to keep the water table up and avoid the risk of drought, but another shower or two before the end of the month would be handy – otherwise the grapes will have very thick skins and not much juice.
The wine industry is waiting to see what will come of the ongoing disagreements between the BIVB (Burgundy’s representative generic body) and the Syndicat des Bourgognes (as reported by Jancis Robinson and Decanter).
I have for years been campaigning for the anomaly, by which the Beaujolais crus can be declassified into Bourgogne Rouge, to be suppressed. There is a commercial history behind it, but surely it flies in the face of what terroir is about, which is matching grape varieties to locations. There is nothing in common between two wines labelled as Bourgogne Rouge, one grown on acid soils and made with Gamay, the other on alkaline soils made with Pinot.
I have just been taking a small group of customers round Burgundy on one of our scheduled trips and, as you might imagine, we tried out a few of the area’s better restaurants as well as tasting wines and walking the vineyards. Here’s an update on some of them:
It looks as if 2009 will be an early harvest in Burgundy. The flowering has just taken place in very good sunny conditions during the last week in May, which suggests that the grapes should be ripe around 10th September. Too early to be sure of anything yet, of course, but the year has started well except for the occasional hailstorm. Clos de la Roche and surrounding vineyards took a hit on 21st May.
More and more of our producers have been experimenting with biodynamic methods of viticulture in recent years. Some go the whole hog and have achieved biodynamic certification; others are experimenting with certain aspects only. A third group is fully committed but not certified.
Of course another viewpoint is that these producers are certifiable and should be committed at the first opportunity. There are certainly aspects which are hard to swallow: the burying of dung in cow’s horns, the harnessing of cosmic forces, too slavish discipleship of the theoretical founder, Rudolf Steiner.
The sad news this month is that Nicolas Potel has parted company from the negociant house which bears his name, owned by the Cottin brothers of Maison Labouré-Roi. Nicolas, son of the late Gérard Potel of Domaine de la Pousse d’Or in Volnay, is one of Burgundy’s most dynamic figures – not just in terms of the wines he has made over the last ten years but also for his absolute passion for his native region, its vineyards and its wines. It is a wonderful treat to hear him talk about one of his new releases while tasting it from the barrel, or to share a beautiful old bottle crafted by his father.
Recently I had my first chance to taste Olivier Merlin’s 2008s, including his terrific range of Pouilly Fuisses. He makes three of them in all, one from Fuisse itself, one from the Clos des Quarts, and my regular favourite which comes from the village of Vergisson. Here is Olivier talking about it as he draws me a sample from the barrel:
The locals like to say that “The Wind on Palm Sunday will be the Wind for the Year”, by which they mean that whatever the wind is when you come out of church in the late morning of Palm Sunday, is likely to be the defining wind across the summer and especially during the all important month of September. It certainly worked in 1996 (north-east), 1997 (south) and 2003 (unheard of south-east). Those I remember – I must check the other vintages.
The Good News is that there was only a faint breeze on Palm Sunday 2009, and it came from the north-east, so perhaps we can expect sunny skies without undue heat. The vignerons, for the moment, are happy!
As you can see from the photo though, it has been a slow start to the year. No signs of bud break yet on the vines.
Jasper Morris MW
 | Splitting his time between Basingstoke and Burgundy, Berrys' own Burgundian expert finds time to report direct from the vineyards. |
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