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2009: Wine in Context - Your Turn

I've reviewed the year, and declared my top wine moments of 2009. Not just the best wines, but those wines that showed best in a certain context. Wines that made life just that little more special, or accompanied a fabulous, thought-provoking or maybe even tragic event.

I have just three more Wine in Context submissions from Winedoctor readers for you today - when you see Eric Cheng's you will perhaps understand why I stopped short of adding a fourth today. I hope you enjoy reading these latest submissions as much as I did. If you have one of your own to submit please don't hesitate - send me your best wine moments of 2009, and I will post them online (I am assuming your consent for that!). Email them to me here. (30/12/09)

Following on from reading your review of the year, my wine moment of the year was at Domaine Carneros, standing on the patio area out front, melting in the heat, but blown away by their 2006 Pinot Noir Estate. The climate might make it too jammy for some (not me), but the poise and balance of the wine I can only describe as ethereal. I didn't realise Pinot got that good before.

Mainly though I emailed to thank you for your brilliant site. The profiles of Bordeaux and Burgundy are fantastic, I look forward to the Côte Chalonnaise and beyond immensely and wish you all the best for the festive season.

Christian, thank you for this classic example of wine in the context of its origin. It was clearly a fabulous moment. I hope to continue to expand my Bordeaux profiles further in 2010, paying particular attention to the right bank, and will finish that Burgundy guide in the next few weeks, before moving on to Champagne - Chris.

This note is to compliment you on a great website. The Bordeaux profiles are outstanding, and the new Burgundy section is a great introduction to this minefield of a wine region.

One suggestion on your vineyard photos. The Vosne-Romanée section of "Cote de Nuits, Part 3" has a nice feature which shows the boundaries between the Grand Cru climates when one moves the cursor over the photo. Could you please add that feature for other vineyard photos? It's very helpful for getting a sense of how big (actually small for Burgundy) these are.

I look forward to your 2010 additions.

PS. My wine of the year was a 1982 La Lagune.

Thanks for those comments and suggestions Richard. The page you are referring to is here, and there is a similar mouse-over image for Corton. I will see if there are any others that would be amenable to this treatment - Chris.

It has been a very special year for me as a wine drinker and wine lover – at exactly 15 months ago when I first landed on French soil, I had very limited knowledge about wine, barely knowing that Chardonnay is a white grape and Merlot is a red grape. Well I still know Champagne is made with 3 different grapes, but it’s still a bubbly in my eyes and on my tongue. I could not understand anything on the wine list when I had my first proper French meal with my friend from Hong Kong as well. It’s really amazing when I look back now.

Yet with the heart and passion cultivated in the most celebrated wine producing country, it’s like I am riding on a TGV of wine knowledge. By the end of this special year and after completing my MBA in France, I am now back in Hong Kong and working with another wine loving MBA alumni on a local wine entrepreneurship. If everything goes right I shall get my WSET Level 3 certificate in two months too. Drinking wine, or should that be appreciating wine, suddenly becomes an integral part of my life.

I am actively involved with the wine club in my school, arranging visits to various wine regions and tasting events in Paris. Taking the advantage of the close proximity between Fontainebleau and a few wine regions, it has been easy for me to arrange wine trips for fellow wine-loving schoolmates. Burgundy is my favourite region and it’s not surprising that I visited there more frequently than any other region in France. At a quick glance, here are the trips that I have taken this year (I have only cited the domaines that I visited with the people who made the wines):

• Burgundy Cote-d’Or: Domaine des Lambrays, Clos de Tart, Domaine Confuron-Cotetidot, Domaine Albert Morot, Louis Jadot, Château de la Tour (February, April, May, June, August)
• Bordeaux: Latour, Lafite-Rothschild, Haut-Brion & Yquem (April, just after the busy week of en primeur)
• Champagne Maisons & Récoltants: Taittinger, Pierre Gimonnet, Larmandier-Bernier, Lancelot Pienne (May, July, August)
• Sancerre & Pouilly-Fumé: Domaine Alphonse Mellot, Domaine Henri Bourgeois, Domaine Didier Dagueneau (August)
• Alsace: Domaine Albert Mann, Domaine Marcel Deiss, Domaine Andre Kientzler (August)
• Northern Rhône: Domaine Marc Sorrel, Domaine Jamet (August)
• La Revue du Vin de France Tasting (May)

There are two very special visits and wines that I would like to share as they left a very deep impression on me.

Domaine Didier Dagueneau Pouilly-Fume “Silex” 2007:

On a hot sunny August afternoon, I was just crossing the Loire from a visit at Sancerre to Pouilly-Fumé, looking for the famous domaine that is subtly hidden in the field. The only thing that caught my eye and allowed me to recognize the hidden place is a road plate that wrote “Rue Ernesto CHE GUEVARA”. So unusual and special for a road plate in France. I know this is the place where the spirit of the legendary and most revolutionary wine maker in the Loire forever lives.

Didier Dagueneau is such a character in wine making and unfortunately I was too late to know him and also his wines. The one who received me at the entrance of the “bureau” is Charlotte Dagueneau, the young and beautiful daughter of Didier, together with her lovely family dog that lay on the cool stone floor of the entrance. Tasting their great Sauvignon Blancs inside the cool cellar during mid-summer is such a pleasure. Aside from the super cuvée Asteroide, of which they produce only a few hundred bottles, I have tasted every wine in their portfolio, including the Jurançon that they started to sell recently. Their wines are wonderfully made, full of character, “mineralité” and purity. The Silex stands out among the wines with very balanced acidity and a round, rich palate. I have never tasted another Sauvignon Blanc as good as this one before – none from Sancerre, none from Pouilly-Fumé, none from Bordeaux. I start to understand why the Sauvignon Blanc of Didier Dagueneau is regarded as one of the best ten white wines on the planet……

After the tasting, Charlotte drove me around their family vineyards and we had a walk around these different terroirs, including tasting the freshly cut flint in the soil. She also told me a lot of interesting stories about the winemaking of her family and in France, including a very special wine that the family love and keep to themselves only – a Riesling from Pouilly-Fume! Of course it cannot be sold as Appellation Pouilly-Fumé Contrôlée, and it is only for their own enjoyment.

There is no better way to know about the wine culture in these unique territories than through chatting with these unique people, who spend so much effort to tend the vines and craft the wines that live and sing in our glasses. This is one of many special moments that I had when I encountered the wine-makers and owners of the great names that I mentioned above. Without this special year and these special moments, I would certainly miss something great in life and never know how to appreciate wine from a different perspective: it is more than the liquid in the bottle and the label they carry on the bottle. It’s a culture, it’s a living spirit.

Château Lafite-Rothschild 1995:

Before visiting Bordeaux in April this year I knew little about the vast size of these châteaux and their modern equipment. Château Lafite-Rothschild is the best known name for wine in Chinese market. Here, even people who know nothing about wine, or are not interested in wine at all, know that Lafite-Rothschild represents the very best in wine from France. On a grey, rainy late April morning just after the en primeur visits, the Bordeaux châteaux woke up lazily and enjoyed their quiet moments. Meanwhile, visitors like us woke up early and headed for a morning pilgrimage to Château Lafite-Rothschild. It felt like you are rinsing your palate and having your breakfast with the best wine in the world. Such an exciting moment!

After a drive along the wet and slippery road from Margaux towards the northern end of Pauillac, we arrived at the gate of Château Lafite-Rothschild. The sky was grey and it was raining heavily, the same weather as we had at Château d’Yquem in the previous day. Château Lafite-Rothschild was my very first visit to a first-growth château in Bordeaux. The size of the property looks huge to me, as I had only visualized the scale of Burgundy before Bordeaux. When we were led to the underground cellar where the 2007 and 2008 vintages were sleeping, it was like an underground maze with several huge chambers. The vast size of the cellars was really amazing to me. Compared to Burgundy, the winemaking and the management in Bordeaux is so different. Although they are both praised as the best wines in the world, it feels like they are at the different ends of a balance. After all, there’s no right or wrong.

We had our tasting in a round “concert hall” where numerous barrels of wines are stored and where workers do the racking and other procedures. The wine they served was the 1995 vintage, which was described as a girl at adolescence, with around 75% of Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% of Merlot and 10% of Cabernet Franc. The nose of the wine shows strong and prominent herbal, tobacco and caramel aromas, backed up by some light black fruits. The tannin is silky smooth with a good balance of acidity. The wine is starting to become ready and open up, though it still has a long way to improve. Initially on the palate it showed blackberries and hints of chocolate, then with some light minerals followed, and the aftertaste was filled with tobacco and cigar. Interesting, full body and lots of complexity, it is a very good wine indeed, and full of characters on its own which are different to other first-growths I have tasted.

The aftertaste was so long that it still lingered in my mouth by the time I left the cellar. When we crossed the huge red door of the cellar, we had to cover our eyes - a clear blue sky with warm rays of sunshine radiated on us and the château. “Drinking wines from Château Lafite-Rothschild will turn a bad day to a good one”, we joked - what a tagline for wine lovers!

What can I say Eric? I'm speechless. That is quite a journey you have been on, and it is great to see someone develop a very broad appreciation of wine so quickly, rather than becoming obsessed with critics' points, or with one or two regions or styles at the expense of all others. I should point out Eric included several more stunning images although I haven't had the space to reproduce them all here - Chris.

Wine in Context moments don't have to concern only great or expensive wines to qualify, it's the context that I'm looking for! So send me your best wine moments of 2009, and I will post them online (I am assuming your consent for that!). Email them to me here.