Wine & Spirits - October 2019 - 62

YEAR'S BEST
RED BURGUNDIES

GEVREY-CHAMBERTIN
272504

95 | Domaine Quivy

Our blind panels tasted 255 red Burgundies over the past 12 months. Joshua Greene,
our critic for Burgundy, rated 66 as exceptional (90+) and 7 as Best Buys.
Find a complete list of wines tasted and all reviews at wineandspiritsmagazine.com.

CO TE D E N U I TS
CHAMBOLLE-MUSIGNY
272798

93 | Louis Jadot

$140

2016 Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les
Fuées ^ Les Fuées sits on the southern border
of Bonnes Mares, on the Chambolle side.
This wine reflects that position in its lithe
and silken texture. It has a springtime feel,
the flavors transitioning from apple blossoms to early summer berries, not yet fully
expressive, as if waiting to step up from the
pretty red-fruited wine it is now to the beautiful, open-ended wine it begins to describe as
it lengthens with air. § Kobrand, Purchase, NY
272666

92 | Pascal Clément

$90

2016 Chambolle-Musigny ^ Structured by
oak tannins, which give it some bitterness
and a rich, fine-grained texture, this wine
begins to open with air toward dark cherry
flavors. It turns racy, lenghening the tannins toward elegance. Decant it if you open
it soon, to serve with roast duck. § Valkyrie
Selections, Healdsburg, CA
272544

92 | Dom. Antonin Guyon

$90

91 | Bouchard Père & Fils

$80

2016 Chambolle-Musigny La Cras ^ Tense
with mineral structure surrounding bright,
stemmy strawberry flavors and gamey notes,
this is a concentrated, earthy Chambolle. The
wine has a beauty and clarity that takes it well
above its village provenance. § Taub Family
Selections, Boca Raton, FL
272878
2017 Chambolle-Musigny ^ Supple and comfortably rich, this wine's red fruit feels plump,
even as there's muscle in its stemmy tannins,
firming up the finish. It lasts on earthy notes
of tree bark and forest floor. With a few years
of bottle age, the fruit should lengthen out
to meet that woodland complexity. § Maisons
& Domaines Henriot, NY
236828

91 | Jean-Claude Boisset

$99

2016 Chambolle-Musigny ^ This wine gains
its immediate beauty from fashionable oak.
It's gracious and cherry-lithe, taking the
refinement of Chambolle and bringing fresh
62

WINE & SPIRITS

OCTOBER 2019

juiciness, along with a spiciness, like cured
sausage. Darren Dunn at Temple Court in
NYC called it "an aromatic roller coaster"
that jumbled the progression he expected
from the wine, but agreed it's an elegant and
beautiful ride, nonetheless. (W&S 4/19) § Boisset Collection, St. Helena, CA
272502

90 | Dom. Odoul-Coquard

$131

2016 Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les
Baudes ^ This comes across as modern and
slickly oaked when first poured, needing air
to reveal the first hints of a cool, foresty perfume. The fruit is gentle and clean, firmer
than the soft caramel tones of the oak. This
needs bottle age to integrate and evolve. § Banville Wine Merchants, NY

$330

2016 Chapelle-Chambertin Grand Cru ^
Gérard Quivy takes this wine through a cool
fermentation in a combination of stainlesssteel and wooden vats. Then he ages it for
20 months in François Frères barrels, 90
percent new. The vines, planted by his wife's
family in the 1940s and 1960s, produced fruit
that's concentrated and racy enough to stand
up to that oak, a bright light of strawberry
freshness and a deep scent of crushed roses.
Together, the elements combine in a fascinating range of tannins, earthy and fleshy,
with a fine textural grit. A beautiful 2016 with
years of development ahead. § Banville Wine
Merchants, NY
272625

93 | Vincent Girardin

$79

93 | Dom. Philippe Livera

$90

$330

2016 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Vieilles
Vignes ^ This Gevrey has a casual beauty that's
hard to ignore. Eric Germain makes it from
a parcel of 60-year-old vines, taking the fruit
through a slow, spontaneous fermentation
and aging the wine in barrels (10 percent
new). It captures the scent of freshly turned
earth and the concentrated flavor of tiny wild
strawberries while feeling light and airy in
its grape-skin tannins. Complex and comforting. § Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL
273350

2016 Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru ^ The scale
of this walled vineyard makes it a spotty
grand cru, but some of the best parcels produce great wines-and Vougeraie farms
some exceptional land, a 2.5-acre parcel just
below the small road leading up to the château. The vines, on a slope facing east, date
from plantings from the 1940s, '50s, '80s and
'90s. They produced a 2016 with delicate persistence and powerful substance. Craig Ganzer, a Burgundy collector, described the wine
as "almost entirely minerals and earth." It's
ripe, powerful and complex, a structured
wine suited to a long rest in the cellar. (W&S
4/19) § Boisset Collection, St. Helena, CA

2016 Gevrey-Chambertin Clos Village ^
Here's a lieu-dit that performs at the level
of a premier cru. Its stature might be due
to the 70-year-old vines growing adjacent to
Damien Livera's winery, or to the fact that
the grapes don't go very far before they land
in the cold underground cellar, where they
develop into a resonant baritone of Gevrey.
It's a wine of meaty intensity, all about game
when it isn't about pressed flowers, with a
tannic grip you can breathe as it fades into
earthy complexity. § North Berkeley Imports,
Berkeley, CA
272514

CLOS DE VOUGEOT
236960

93 | Domaine de la
Vougeraie

ECHEZEAUX
272610

93 | Domaine MongeardMugneret

$169

2016 Echezeaux Grand Cru ^ Quiet complexity gives this wine an aristocratic feel;
it's comfortable in its richness, presenting
itself as light and airy despite the tight, subtle depth to the flavors. Notes of fraises des
bois last with clean, fragrant persistence. This
is supple, firm and structured for long aging. §
Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL

93 | Domaine Quivy

$308

2016 Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru ^
Gérard Quivy farms this family domaine in
Gevrey, including a parcel of 60- to 80-yearold vines in Charmes-Chambertin. His 2016
is a precise, detailed wine with the elegant
richness of the grand cru. There's an underlying power rising up from the deep layers of
fruit and earth, a well of cherries, blueberry
skins, zinnias and black olives. Its energy
lasts, holding the wine fresh for days after
the bottle is opened, suggesting a long life
ahead. § Banville Wine Merchants, NY
272510

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Wine & Spirits - October 2019

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