Domaine de la Romanee Conti: yours for just £10,000 a bottle!
Monday 12 September
In August’s edition of Decanter, I asked is Burgundy a one horse-race when it comes to investment? The answer was yes - at the moment - but names like Jayer, Rousseau, Roumier and Dujac are worth a dabble in the top years.
The conclusion was backed up by an auction at Bonhams last week, selling a case of Romanee-Conti 1990 vintage for £126,500. That’s more than £10,000 per bottle or £1,750 a glass – although I suppose that depends on the size of your glass!
Another case of Romanee-Conti, this time from 1988, sold for £74,750.
Interestingly, both cases were bought by a European buyer and it will be interesting to see how they perform in the Far East when the auction house sells more cases of the 1988 and 1990 vintage in Hong Kong in November.
The price of Romanee-Conti has shown, on average, a rise of 50% over the last year, according to Liv-ex.
The week that was at decanter.com
Friday 12 August
August is a quiet month for the wine industry – most of France, Italy and Spain go on holiday. Yet, there’s been plenty to write about this week at Decanter.com, where I’m acting as news and commissioning editor. So here’s a digest of the main news stories in the wine industry this week…
Champagne
The Champenois have announced the yield for the 2011 vintage – 12,500kg – which is approximately 20% more than last year due to increased demand for bubbly. The Champagne houses wanted a higher yield with their sales up 13% last year but the growers weren’t so keen, and this was the compromise.
The Champagne region is now recovering from a blip during the economic crash of late 2008 and if sales continue on the upward curve it is now on, they’ll have a shortage. The industry is currently undertaking research to figures out a way to manage supply and demand. With a restricted area that is planted to bursting point, they will struggle to make more, so it will be interesting to see what solution they come up with.
Burgundy
In Burgundy, five grands crus vineyards are banning the use of machine harvesting from the coming vintage. I spoke to president of the Union of Burgundy Grands Crus, Louis-Michel Liger-Belair, during his holiday in Tuscany to ask him why they’d done this. There are 5% of the grands crus that use machines and it gives us a bad image. Hand harvesting does cost a bit more but the quality is much better,’ he said.
At the end of the week, Domaine de l’Arlot’s winemaker of 13 years has also left to establish his own domaine down in the Ardeche. More on that next week, I hope.
USA
Over in the US, there have been acquisitions aplenty. At the start of the week, Fiji water billionaire, Stewart Resnick bought Chardonnay specialist Landmark Vineyards of Sonoma. It’s the second purchase for his company Roll Global in eight months.
Roll Global is one to watch, as is Alejandro Bulgheroni. While most magazines reported his acquisition of Renwood Vineyard from the company’s press release, there seemed to be more to this one. A 20-minute chat with Alejandro, revealed he was not only a charming businessman that has made his millions in oil and gas, he’s also got grand designs for a wine empire, aspiring to run six wineries, including what’s thought to be the world’s southernmost vineyard.
UK
London rioters stormed Michelin-star restaurant The Ledbury at the start of the week, smashing windows and stealing personal items from customers. The Ledbury’s kitchen staff managed to chase away the rioters, armed with a variety of kitchen items. While it must have been terrifying for diners, The Ledbury offered them all Champagne to ease their anxiety.
Further restaurant news in London: Spanish chef Jose Pizarro will be opening a Cava bar at his new restaurant Pizarro. It is in Bermondsey Street – the same road as his newly-opened tapas and sherry bar. It should open in October. Should….
Burgundy borders
Sunday 30 January
The lines of Burgundy’s famed wine villages were drawn by a cartographer’s pen but do they accurately reflect a wine’s sense of place?
This question was asked at the Central Otago Pinot celebration and but we never quite managed to get a definitive answer out of the illustrious panellists Sylvain Pitiot, director of Clos du Tart in Morey St Denis, and Sophie Confuron of Domaine Jean-Jacques Confuron. Ultimately, you have to make up your own mind.
It queried our acceptance of the existing lines drawn in Burgundy, which separate Volnay from Pommard, for example, or Nuits-St-Georges from Vosne-Romanee. Meursault Chardonnay is defined as fuller and more buttery than next door Puligny-Montrachet yet some Pulignys taste more Meursault-like. Can we really pigeon hole the styles so simply?
Well, these broadly generalised styles by village do serve us well but should not be relied upon.
A tasting of three Cotes de Beaune wines and three Cote de Nuits wines, some in the heart of the appellations, and others on the fringes illustrated that the sweeping statements that Pommard is structured while Volnay is perfumed and silky does have legs but it also has to be pointed out that the vintage and the hand of the winemaker can dramatically affect the wine style.
In addition, we all knew what was in each glass. If it had been a blind tasting, would we have been claiming the Nuits-St-Georges was so classically styled?
If you really wanted to try and get to grips with the differences between appellations in Burgundy, it’s a good idea to get three wines from the same producer from three different appellations over a number of vintages. But then you’d also need deep pockets…
The delicious, and well selected, wines were:-
Domaine Comtes Armand, Volnay 1er Cru, Les Fremiets 2007
Floral with cherry, minerality. Silky and supple, with moderate acidity and balanced alcohol. Fine grained tannins – almost imperceptible. Voluptuous, charming.
Domaine de Courcel, Pommard Premier Cru, Les Fremiers 2007
Made by a blood relation of Jacques Chirac, this was a firm, austere wine. Damson skin and black fruits, violets and warming clove/nutmeg type spice. Good mid palate weight. Structured fruit and stem tannins yet still incredibly fine and fresh acid. Alchohol perfectly integrated. Sinewy
Domaine de Montille, Pommard Premier Cru, Les Rugiens 2007
Described by Nick Mills of Rippon Estate as more silk scarves than wellies, this producer’s Pommard had plenty of weight and lots of new French oak spice. Muted cherry and subtle savoury character. None of that new world sweetness on the front palate, good mid palate concentration, finely woven tannins giving some structure – expected more ruggedness and a little more structure for a Pommard – is the fruit and oak perhaps masking the structure? Needs time.
Domaine Lechenaut, Nuits-St-Georges 1er Cru, Les Pruliers 2007
A relatively deep Pinot with a lot of new French oak coming through on the nose. Fleshy yet delicate on mid palate. Dense and tight tannin structure, with fresh acidity and a linear finish.
Domaine Jean Jacques Confuron, NSG 1er Cru Aux Boudots 2007 (on the border with Vosane Romanee)
Perhaps the wine of the day for most delegates. Silky and elegant on the mid palate, with a tight linear structure, sinewy finish, and fresh acid.
Domaine Grivot, Vosne Romanee 1er Cru, Les Chaumes 2007 (right on the border with Nuits St Georges)
Generous and fleshy on entry compared to Nuits St Georges, the tannins are mouthcoating and ripe rather than tight and drawn out.
Resveratrol and the men in white coats
Tuesday 25 May
The latest herbal remedy renaissance is resveratrol. I can’t walk into a chemist to buy a packet of plasters without being confronted by an all-singing all-dancing resveratrol offer. Yesterday there was an ad on the radio extolling the virtues of it and I found myself telling the radio it should just have a glass of wine.
Obviously, a radio can’t hear me nor drink wine, and the men in white coats have been alerted of my latest penchant for talking to the radio. But come on, there’s a global wine glut. Why do we need to take a tasteless pill for something we can obtain from a delicious glass of wine? Beats me.
So what wines should you look for if you want to up your resveratrol intake? Reds should be top of your list. Research has found red wines have ten times more resveratrol than whites – damn, there goes my excuse for having another glass of Riesling.
In the red corner, Muscadine has the highest concentration of resveratol of all grape varieties but how often do you see Muscadine on the shelves outside of the USA? And if you did, would you want to drink it?! Pinot Noir also tends to have high levels of resveratrol whereas Cabernet Sauvignon has lower levels. According to the bible, a.k.a The Oxford Companion, cooler regions tend to produce wines higher in resveratrol, so think Burgundy, Washington and New Zealand - not Australia or India.
If there’s a market for selling resveratrol pills, then surely there’s a gap in the market for wines high in resveratrol. Well, so it seems, but that gap has already been identified by a Hunter Valley winery. Pendarves has created a Resveratrol Enhanced Wines that contains between 1,500% and 10,000% of the ‘normal’ levels of the antioxidant resveratrol. It claims resveratrol levels in its ‘Wine Doctor’ red wines are increased from 3-6mg/l to about 100mg/l, and those in its white wines are also increased from 1mg/l to about 100mg/l.
But does it taste any good? I’ll seek out a bottle and let you know. If you’ve already tried it and been impressed/distressed, let us know.
Playing monopoly in Central Otago
Wednesday 28 April
If you had a Central Otago monopoly board, who’d be your Old Kent Road and who’d be your Mayfair?
I’ve had a few Old Kent Road Pinots but I shall spare them the Hall of Shame today. However, Felton Road (the road, not the winery) is probably the Mayfair - or “Park Lane” – says Duncan Forsyth, ‘the big cheese’, at Mount Edward.
Likewise, according to Matthew Jukes’ official classification, two of New Zealand’s top three Pinot Noir producers are based along this Bannockburn roadway: Mt Difficulty and Felton Road.
While Mount Edward is a Gibbston Valley-based producer, it bought an orchard here in 2007 at an “exorbitant” price (lucky there were no houses or hotels or it would’ve cost even more). But it’s worth it in Forsyth’s eyes.
“As time goes on I think it will vault ahead of everyone else,” he says. “It is the Park Lane of Central Otago.”
The first vintage of ‘Muirkirk’ Pinot Noir (well, all 65 cases of it) has already been released, made from existing vines planted in 1997. It’s more Oxford Street at the moment but as the vines get older, you can imagine that it could move up to Park Lane.
Despite a recession and a halt to planting throughout the rest of New Zealand, Forsyth planted another 4ha there last year. “I think we were the only fools to plant last year,” he laughs. Well, you’ve got to be a little bit crazy to become a winemaker in the first place.