Saturday, May 24, 2008

Sunday Monkey dinner

A quiet Sunday evening at home with nothing to do but make myself dinner and watch Cracker, the next BBC show in line on my Netflix (tried MI-5, but was really put off by the slickness, the lameness, and all the jump-cutting…MAKE IT STOP).

2005 Louis Boillot Bourgogne

The saturated and sparkly ruby color winks at you from across the room. No surprises there as you would think that 2005 would produce healthy, frolicking wines. I have high expectations from someone married to Ghislaine Barthod, who I think makes one of the two or three best Bourgogne in all of the Côte d’Or. Seems to have a nice, sappy, vibrant cran-cherry fruit framed by woodspice. Fairly well balanced and not too tannic. All in all, a nice wine and good with the mushroom frittata, but is is really worth $30? The first time I bought a Bourgogne rouge in quantity was the 1995 Barthod, for which I paid about $15 a bottle. That wine served me well, in fact, I just drank the last bottle in September 2007 with FlaJim at his place in the mountains. Unless $30 becomes the new $20, I think that this pricing structure could cause some long-term problems for producers. What happens when the scores dry up (or capital does) and there just aren’t people willing to pay $30-35 for Bourgogne as hostage wines for Premier and Grand Cru (I think this is an even bigger problem for villages level wines)? There will always be a market for Volnay Caillerets and Gevrey Cherbaudes from Boillot, but I really believe you can’t have a sustainable model that way.

1 comment:

Chuck Smith said...

"Unless $30 becomes the new $20"

I think the Dollar/Euro rate fixed that one.

Sucks.