2009 Burgundy en primeur: Beaune, Pommard, Volnay

18/01/11

Jean-Marc Boillot, Joseph Drouhin, Michel Lafarge

9am on day two of our trip, we are at Jean-Marc Boillot. Having tasted a Volnay and a couple of Pommards, your eager correspondent asks Jean-Marc what he did differently to make the wines so 2009, and yet so fresh and softly, silkily tannic. Boff, he replied, I'm too old to change anything at this stage. I did vinification the same as always. The whites are lovely too: the oak is already integrated, they are true to their villages, the Puligny nervier than the Meursault; the Referts at its most exciting, tingliest best. Married to an oenologist, J-M has constant measurements taken of dissolved oxygen in the whites, doesn't pick too ripe and is careful not to do too much canopy management, both the latter points he thinks contribute to problems some other people have experienced, but not him.

Domaine Drouhin is almost more famous for its Oregon operation than its 73 hectares of organically and biodynamically farmed Burgundy terroirs. The company has holdings in many of the most prestigious sites and makes lovely, mineral wines from them. Truly a family domaine, father and all four children are fully involved in either the winegrowing or the business side. Now 130 years old, it isn't a domaine that has ever really gone much for tradition. Like most people in Burgundy they adopted the new postwar 'scientific' methods of chemical viticulture, but were amongst the first to abandon them. Their rationale for turning to biodynamics is to get as much of their terroir into the glass as possible.

2009 and Lafarge go together like a horse and carriage, domaine and vintage in perfect harmony. The wines here are ethereal in 09: crystalline, mineral, packed with delicate fruit and structured like spider silk; virtually invisible yet stronger than steel. They are positively fey, glance out of the window drinking one of these and you may glimpse a faery. Visiting here is a step back out of the hectic round of visits and Frederic and Michel's famously cobwebbed and black mould-encrusted cellar seems to have its own rhythm - pulsing to the seasons, producing wines that will delight all Burgundy lovers. /CW

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Tomorrow
Puligny and Chassagne

Thursday 27 January
Burgundy tasting 12-8pm, £25 per person inc VAT (redeemable against 2009 Burgundy en primeur purchases)

Offered subject to remaining unsold for shipment 2011/12