Potel Magic

2024 was special for many reasons, not least because I had the good fortune to drink and share eight magical bottles made by Gerard Potel.

Over the last decade, I’ve sought out Potel’s contemporaries and clients to learn about how he approached his work at Pousse d’or, buying whatever I can find, guarding each bottle jealously.

Perhaps more than any other single producer, Gerard Potel’s wines have expanded my thinking most on what wine can be. Whenever a bottle is opened, I try to connect the snippets and stories I’ve gleaned over the years with the mesmerizing wine in the glass.

From everything I’ve read and heard about Potel, it’s evident that he possessed a remarkably clear and stubborn vision for what he wanted his wines to be, pushing and refining his work to improve each year, unafraid of experimentation to achieve the utmost result. Ultimately what mattered most was to make the best possible wine, every year, not any one particular technique.

A great part of that vision was to produce wines that would endure, and from these data points, he undoubtedly succeeded.

Potel’s wines age glacially, often tasting decades younger than they actually are, yet never feel frozen in time. No matter the age, these wines always speak with such a vivid intensity of detail, of life and vigor, one that feels amplified by the savory depth of bottle age.

The Pousse d’Or of this era are my benchmark for how great red Burgundies can mature, maintaining a core of high toned crystalline purity as the texture melts and the fruit softens, sweetening from fresh to gently baked, gaining layers of orange zest and spice and depth from subtle chestnut and tilled earth umami.

What each wine gives in intensity, it matches in weightlessness. These wines were all marked by a great sense of seamlessness, with fruit, floral, spice, umami, acid, tannin, viscosity and texture all interlocked in equilibrium. 

From what I’ve read and those I’ve spoken to, Potel kept 90% of his harvest whole cluster through 1989/1990, only destemming fruit from young vines. Then after between 70-90%, to aid in an even more rigorous sorting.

In that way, I found the pre-1989 bottles I drank this year, from 1988, 78 and 69, to be slightly different aromatically and texturally, with a touch more damask rose framing the muddled and confit strawberries, and a gently sweeter, higher toned, crystalline sense of lift. The presentation of tannin felt more seamless and enveloped by flesh in the pre ‘89 bottles, even in the leaner ‘88. Whereas the later wines seemed to show a different depth of density, with a powdery tannin tactility that while still enveloped, stood out more from the core of the flesh.

Thinking back on these bottles and connecting them to my research on Potel, what did I take away for my own work?

Always begin with a clear vision for wine that is your own, taste constantly and refine your own sense of quality. Always stay true to your own aesthetic values and vision for wine, no matter outside opinions or the fashion of the day. He wasn’t afraid to experiment beyond what was in vogue if it would make his wines better.

Potel wasn’t a man of extremes necessarily in any one particular choice, he always destemmed a little, did not vinify particularly hot or cool, only kept his wine in barrel for at most twelve months after malolactic, and did not use much new oak, but he was extreme in his vision of what he wanted his wines to be, in his unyielding commitment to his own definition of excellence.

Observe, learn and refine each season, to keep improving and never stay stagnant.

Through his thirty two vintages, Potel continued to refine and adapt his approach each year to produce incredible wines, even in thoroughly testing vintages. It’s evident that his process was always in service of the wine, not ego nor ideology.

Though not represented in this year’s bottles, Gerard Potel made delicious wines that transcended the challenges of many a difficult vintage. Of the 92, 87, 81, 76s I’ve had, Potel’s are far beyond anything else I’ve tried from those vintages. They are not simply very good for the vintage, but special wines in their own right, the mark of a truly great producer. 

This approach is an important validation and reminder that great wine is not just the amalgamation of many disparate techniques and choices through the year. Copying and inserting one technique from another successful producer may throw one’s own equilibrium off entirely. Rather, it’s how all these decisions and details fit together, into a coherent whole that is most crucial.

This trait is something shared by the producers I admire most, and the lesson never gets old.

Tasting Notes:

1969 Pousse d’or Volnay Caillerets Clos des 60 ouvrees 

Upon first pour, the ‘69 60 ouvrees felt like a youthful ‘89, and with  roast pigeon perhaps even a 2009. The wine had as much fruit as the neighboring ‘06 Leroy Narbantons (an incredible wine in itself), but obviously expressed differently through the lens of maturity.

Much like the younger bottles, this ‘69 was brimming with detail, jumping out of the glass with fresh and poached strawberries, rose water, raspberries macerated in framboise liqueur and scented with grated orange zest, all of which sits above the sweet, savory umami of melting roast chestnut and black truffle.

This wine felt serene yet exuberant, poised while playful, gliding across the palate with silken ease as well as a gentle viscosity that envelops the density from intertwining acid and chalk dust tannin, lending three dimensionality and gravitas all without heft.

Amazingly, this felt even fresher, more vibrant and less melted than the 78 Bousse d’Or I drank in January, but with the added complexity from savory umami and depth. This felt like a wine that would live past 100 with ease.

1978 Pousse d’Or Volnay Clos de la Bousse d’Or 

I can still taste this wine vividly, months after the fact. Served blind and last after a dinner of splendid Dujac, this woke my palate and mind right back up at the end of the evening.

This had a sweet, gently confited, melting and spherical crystallinity that could only come from bottle age. This touched the palate in a way that felt quite different from the wines served previously, like a poached strawberry, soft and melting on the palate, its sweetness amplified by grated nutmeg, damask rose and rose water, and the sweet orange oil umami of old grand marnier.

I loved how the tactile experience, totally melted and velvet, seemed to heighten that sense of softening and sweetening in the fruit.

Like many great mature wines, the aromatics and palate were haunting, totally aligned and intertwined, lingering retronasally long after the bottle was finished.

1988 Pousse d’Or Volnay Caillerets 60 ouvrées 

So young, this feels like a wine half its age. Such an incredible sense of crystalline purity melded with weightless intensity. A little bit leaner than other wines I’ve had from 89/90/91, but this only serves to heighten that sense of crystallinity and weightlessness 

Raspberries, fresh, barely crushed juice, orange zest, some thyme, silky silky silky, incense and chestnut umami but only subtly boosts the fruit, doesn’t speak on its own. 

With pigs ears it grows sweeter, showing more orange zest and raspberry, and more macerated fruit comes to the fore. Grilled corn brings out all this damask rose petal and rose water.. 

This really feels no older than 15 years.

Now at 1.5 hours in, it’s all strawberries and cream.

The second half of the bottle is starting to expand further aromatically; more floral and fruit detail, more of everything.

In the zalto bordeaux it’s much sweeter than in the sensory, with more musky damask rose, crushed baked and confit strawberries, more nutmeg, more orange oil and zest, younger again. A beautiful example of Potel coaxing beauty and greatness in a tricky vintage. 

90 Pousse d’Or Volnay Caillerets 

Was quite tight and austere at opening, with notably dense clayey tannin, still quite wound, similar to my other experiences with the ‘regular’ caillerets, so I decant and after an hour and a half it begins to blossom. 

Our first pours are much silkier, with the purity and finesse I associate with Potel, singing of damask rose, rose water, muddled raspberries. Such fine but such density of tannin that interacts with bright acidity, quite remarkable, really lends an intense sense of verticality and freshness to the wine. 

The last pours gain a beautiful sweet umami of orange oil and old grand marnier that frames and lifts the fruit further. Wow.

1993 Pousse d’Or Volnay Clos de la Bousse d’or

Quite austere upon opening as is typical for the Clos de la Bousse d’or, but begins to open after 2.5 hours. This feels easily 20 years younger than the stated age, singing of damask rose, nutmeg, muddled strawberries and rhubarb. While silky and caressing, with a gently spherical sweetness on one hand, there is a firm acidity that accentuates the perception of the dense, but very fine, chalky tannin.

This could be due to it being the youngest wine of Potel that I’ve tried, or a particularity of the vintage, but this is perhaps the wine where I feel the slight reduction in whole cluster usage the most, not in its aromatics or flavors, but in the integration of its acid-tannin matrix, one that sits just parallel to the core of the wine rather than totally enveloped.

PS: Detailed notes on the 90 Jarollieres, 90 + 91 Clos de la Bousse d’Or have been lost in the ether, but they were all incredible bottles.

The Jarollieres and 91 Bousse d’Or both showed very much in line with the exuberant sweet purity and spherical generosity of the 78, just beginning to show some of that melted texture, with orange oil and nutmeg that framed and sweetened the red fruit, but with a greater sense of youthful delineation and vigor. The Jarollieres showed a touch more mid palate viscosity, density and breadth, speaking of the vintage, while the 91 had an added layer of perfume, with intoxicating rose water and damask rose that lifted the fruit and spice further into the stratosphere.

The 90 Bousse d’Or showed similarly to the 93 in its initial austerity, again speaking of the site’s personality, requiring a full 2 hours in the decanter and food to really unwind and unfurl. Once open, it offered the same sense of crystalline, sweet fruited purity of the 91, all orange oil, muddled raspberries and rose water, but with a dimensionality on the palate that felt more like velvet than silk, a vertical, woven density that was almost muscular while still incredibly graceful. This was a wine that I would love to revisit in a decade.