Through the Looking Glass

Harvest and its preparation is always a time of simultaneous reflection and anticipation. Things can feel upside down, a hyper focused blur, in the wait leading up to picking. To ground myself, I retrace notes of wines that have moved me, what I learned from them, trying to reinforce the values that are most important to me, how I define quality for myself.

In July I was fortunate to experience these wines in Boston shared generously by a new friend, Russell Frye. Tasting wine with age is so important to me, not only for the pleasure and the inspiration, but to see intention resolved and validated. To see what remains and what has changed, grown and evolved, gives insight into how these growers wanted to organize and lay the foundations of each wine before letting them go. The term elevage, ‘to raise’, seems particular appropriate in this sense.

I loved these wines for the experience in each glass, but I will remember them for how they all felt imbued with such clarity of values and intention.

1982 Ramonet Montrachet

I can’t help but ‘wow’ out loud upon my first smell. So incredibly detailed and intense, singing of candied walnuts, hazelnut oil, lemon zest, aged Comte, dried ginger, digestive biscuit, mint and orange oil.

Beautifully chiseled with searing density underlies the broad, gentle, lemon zest inflected creme fraîche and waxy comte viscosity. Wondrously long retronasally, the aromas waft back in my nasal cavity for 5+ minutes as we converse, especially the candied walnuts and hazelnuts.

With oysters it feels 20 years younger, singing of lemon oil, iodine and bergamot, the viscosity and richness of umami fading to the background. Whereas with escargot the hazelnut and comte, textural richness, toasty umami explodes and highlights the other side of the coin.

It is precisely this searing, chiseled density of intertwining acidity and dry extract that underpins the wine and all great white wines of this era I’ve tasted. The way in which the structure and flesh mirror each other lends an immaculate sense of harmony and proportion. How the sumptuous flesh and viscosity of age, and particularly this terroir, sits upon this base of structure, can only be intentional. This is why the familiarity that comes with farming is so vital, to know what a wine is capable of, I believe that one must first have a relationship with the site.

A complete wine and a benchmark for the ages.

1990 Domaine Leroy Vosne Beaux Monts:

This is the most immediately intoxicating wine of the evening, seamless and enveloped, I can’t put the glass down.

With each pour the wine grows even sweeter, more crystalline, with an incredibly pure sense of liqueur from crushed raspberries and strawberries, as well as gently baked strawberries seasoned with damask rose and rosehip oil. Everything feels like it’s showing in even higher definition.

There’s more of everything, without changing the sense of balance or equilibrium. If anything, the heightened sense of vibrance and detail has only served to increase the sense of weightless intensity. Beneath the red fruit grows a greater sense of orange oil, grand marnier, honeyed peach and vosne spice (particularly nutmeg, green cardamom and fenugreek) that really amplifies the sense of sweet, crystalline red fruited purity.

This feels silken, but as though many sheets of silk have been layered on top of one another, so it has a greater sense of presence and dimensionality, but at it’s core, it is still silk. If there was ever a wine that distilled the essence of beaux monts, this could be it, in how it spoke of the purity, perfume and texture I love about this site.

1990 Pousse d’or Volnay Caillerets

This had the most dramatic transformation of the evening, going from firm and unyielding to sweet and giving. The transformation is mesmerizing, evoking the most gorgeous rosehip, rose water, damask rose fresh, dried and oil, rosehip jelly, sitting atop fresh raspberries, gently macerated strawberries in brown sugar, orange zest and dried damask rose. The transformation is astounding, and feels even more weightlessly intense than the Leroy by the last glass, more crystalline and pure. Like the Leroy, the way the florals and orange zest sweet umami frames the purity of red fruit is mesmerizing. This is really, really magical, in the way that I love so much about Potel.

Where as the Leroy was the star of the first half of the evening, but the the Potel surpassed it by the last glass, even as the Leroy as improved.

This has just begin to melt on the edges in my last few glasses, in a way that really highlights the sweetness, crystalline purity and weightless intensity. Like the many great bottles by Potel I’ve enjoyed before, what this gave in intensity, it matched in weightlessness. As the wine grew and opened, so did its sense of seamlessness, with fruit, floral, spice, umami, acid, tannin, viscosity and texture all interlocked in equilibrium. At 35 years, It felt as though we were just scratching the surface of what this wine would give with more time in bottle.

The wines of Gerard Potel have been deeply moving, they have expanded my mind in what wine can be, and are a huge inspiration in how I want my wines to make others feel.