Singing Burgs

A few of us took advantage of the opportunity to sample the fare at the new Five Restaurant in downtown Berkeley. The free corkage on Monday nights was another incentive. We started with another bottle of 2002 Fevre Chablis Bougros, a Grand Cru from low on the GC slope close to the river. Normally this wine is not quite up to the standards of the other Grand Cru, and in particular the Preuses higher on the slope and the Bougros Cotes des Bouguerots from a much steeper section of the vineyard. The Friday before I had checked in on a bottle after reading all the reports of premox in the Fevre, especially the 2002. That bottle, while not really exceedingly complex or nuanced, still showed a very energetic palate with the citrus core rounding and smoothing out, although full maturity is still down the road. The bottle on Monday was recognizably in the same style, but much more muted and reserved, with a touch of what I thought was TCA, although other experienced tasters did not initially agree. With time, my glass showed these aromas much more strongly, while strangely the glasses of the other tasters did not--perhaps there were some fairly rapid reactions with chlorine in the glass left over from dishwashing. Anyway, too bad, I have to label this one as corked...

Next up was a red Burgundy, a 1996 Denis Mortet Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaut St. Jacques. This one showed well from the first pour, but kept getting stronger and better in the glass over time. This wine is closer to an end member in the spectrum of Burgundy styles, emphasizing concentration and ripe fruit over minerality and precision. So whether this is going to be somebody's favorite Burg style is a matter of personal taste, but within its style it performed brilliantly. Ripe cascades of red Pinot fruit were modulated by underbrush and spicy floral aromas, which became more expressive and nuanced with time. By the end of the bottle the wine was singing, as we said to our neophyte colleague who accompanied us, with waves of wild, decadent Gevrey-Chambertin fruit sweeping from mid-palate to nose. Our neophyte claims now he is irreversibly corrupted by this wine, his first aged Burgundy. There is no going back now...