At the moment I’m loving Seared Spring Breast of Squab, with fennel, watercress, walnuts and a balsamic dressing. This dish needs a wine both high in acidity and with great mouthfeel. The 2007 Robert Arnoux ‘Pinot Fin’ Bourgogne is a delicious drop. ‘Pinot Fin’ is an ancient clone of Pinot Noir and comes from vines located directly across from Vosne-Romanee, and from vines that are 50 years old.
The front palate shouts sour cherries and raspberries and this develops into a nice savoury mid and back palate with an underlying minerality and slight earthiness. The squab meat I find is nice and sweet, slightly smokey when seared, so the end finish of the wine deals with this and balances out the palate. The accompaniments marry well with this wine style – there is the freshness of the watercress and fennel, some richness from the walnuts and then some acidity from the balsamic. There is also a slight earthiness and more secondary characters which fit into the theme of the Old World.
2007 Robert Arnoux “Pinot Fin” Bourgogne
Importer: Bibendum
A very impressive basic cuvee aged 2/3’s in stainless steel and 1/3 new oak also spending 10 months on lees….the best one I’ve seen for a while from the Rhone Valley Etienne Guigal.
Pale yellow in colour with a very pretty bouquet of pear, apricot kernel, acacia flowers, spice, honeysuckle and marzipan. For all its heady, floral aromas the wine also smells quite rich and inviting.
Textured and weighty on the palate with vibrant pear and stone fruit characters, spice, minerals, white flowers with a hint of honeysuckle and just a touch of some struck match complexity. It’s a medium-bodied, fairly rich wine with a hint of roasted nuts on the finish and a precise line of mineral acidity. An excellent effort and a superb food wine…think rich seafood and crustacean dishes.
Rated: Very Good
Value: 
RRP: $79.99
Alcohol: 13.5%
Closure: Cork
Tasted: 20/7/09 Open Label
Distributor: Negociants
Website: www.guigal.com
Retailer: Ultimo Wine Centre
The 2007 Domaine Michel Magnien Gevrey Chambertin “Les Seuvrees” Vieilles Vignes Burgundy is bright, expressive and vibrantly fruited, drenched with macerated raspberries and woody spice. It’s pretty and alluring, generously curved and silky textured.
But don’t think for a second it’s frivolous.
Behind its up front charm lurks serious intent, a darker side that lurks beneath pile of leaf litter and warm earth. It’s a beautifully shaped wine, fleshy up front, poised and precise through the middle and end.
Rated: Very Good
Value:
RRP: $99.99
Alcohol: 13%
Closure: Cork
Tasted: 11/9/09 Open Label
Distributor: Fourth Wave Wine Partners (associated with Eutopia)
Website: www.domaine-magnien.com
The wines of Auguste Clape need no introduction for lovers of Rhone wines….you think Cornas…..you think Clape as his wines are a bench marks for the region. This offering is his entry level vin de table syrah.
There is a dab of funk on the nose of this wine…just a touch of brett methinks but that in no way detracts from the tarry black cherry and blackcurrant fruits which are abundant when smelling the wine. There are hints of wet earth, licorice and spice in the mix too with some meaty nuances. On the palate it is a bit under-powered and a touch thin but there is some nice peppery black-fruits in the mix with hints of spice, smoky oak, meat and licorice and some lifted blueberry goodness. The finish dips away behind a scrim of sandy tannin but all in all this is a solid little wine in the VdT category.
Rated: Good
Value:
RRP: $40
Alcohol: 12.5%
Closure: Cork
Tasted: 22/8/09 Open Label
Distributor: Negociants
2007 William Fevre Chablis Grand Cru ‘Les Clos’
From four separate parcels within Les Clos itself….4.11ha in total.
Pale yellow in colour with an enchanting, though at this stage of its evolution, backward bouquet of ripe peach and citrus fruits, deep minerals, cinnamon, spice and white flowers.
Rich and piercing on the palate with beautifully detailed ripe peach and stone fruits, citrus rind, spice, minerals, oatmeal , almond paste and river stone. A touch of baby fat but this is a seriously structured wine which demands an extended sleep in the cellar to reach its full potential. A superb shape in the mouth, pure and endearing with a cracking acid profile and a lingering finish.
Rated: Classic
Value:
RRP: $170 (Highly Recommended)
Alcohol: 12.5%
Closure: Cork
Drink: 2012-2020+
Tasted: 14/6/09 Open Label
Website: www.williamfevre.fr
Distributor: Negociants
Retailer: Winestar www.winestar.com.au
The 2007 Domaine Michel Magnien Charmes Chambertin is pretty schmick. But it would want to be at the price, although fairly standard for Grand Cru Burgundy. 
It’s a Charmes of heroic proportions, a wine that grabs your attention early and won’t let go. But if upfront appeal is what gets you in, it’s balance, complexity and impeccable construction that sustains your interest. It’s hedonistically aromatic, a lifted swirl of ripe raspberries and pain d’epices that’s shamelessly seductive. There’s a healthy whack of wood but it’s sexy wood and its prominence on the nose is swallowed up by the fruit once the wine hits the mouth.
This a really satisfying wine texturally, beautifully silky and supple with the substance to sustain the promise of its striking first impressions. Dangerously approachable now, destined for even better things over the next decade.
Rated: Outstanding
Value:
RRP: $320
Alcohol: 13.5%
Closure: Cork
Tasted: 11/9/09 Open Label
Distributor: Fourth Wave Wine Partners (Associated with Eutopia)
Website: www.domaine-magnien.com
Winemaker Frédéric Cossard has set up his domaine just on the outskirts of Saint Romain and is recognised as one of the finest producers of natural wine in Burgundy. His vineyards are organically farmed and his winemaking approach is ‘hands-off’ to allow the fruit to speak of the land itself. Bugger all sulphur in this one with just a tiny dab at bottling.
Pale yellow gold in colour. Quite a generous nose of peach and melon fruit with a touch of honey and hints of soft spice, nougat, porridge and marzipan. It smells clean and vinous with a dab of white flower high tones for good measure. A racy entry onto the palate with an initial burst of lemony citrus and white peach fruit. There is a hint of milky lees character and soft spice that flows into a bracing line of malic twang before settling down to a medium length finish with a waft of lemon curd and oatmeal. Quite lean and crystalline in structure with a steely, mineral texture. A wine that demands food and a delicious one at that.
Rated: Very Good
Value: (Recommended)
RRP: $60
Alcohol: 12.5%
Closure: Cork
Drink: Now-2012
Tasted: 16/8/09 Open Label
Distributor: Andrew Guard Wines
2007 La Chablisienne 1er Cru Chablis ‘Côte de Léchet’
La Chablisienne is a fairly large collection on growers who joined forces in 1923 and formed a cooperative….it is a massive operation with various reports estimating that they vinify around 30% of the wine made in Chablis. This could go some way to explaining the lack of detail apparent in this wine in an excellent Chablis vintage.
Pale yellow in colour with a forward nose of citrus, crushed apple and guava with hints of wet wool and lanolin and gentle wafts of soft spice and oatmeal. Fairly pithy and a touch broad on the palate with nice citrus and stone fruit characters, spice, lanolin and nougat. There is a nice lingering finish with some appealing mealy characters but it lacks the definition and lip smacking malic zing that marks the better wines of this vintage. Just sneaked in for a very good rating.
Rated: Very Good
Value:
RRP: $50
Alcohol: 12.5%
Closure: Screwcap
Drink: Now-2015
Tasted: 14/8/09 Open Label
Distributor: Vintage Cellars
Website: www.lachablisienne.net
Stockists: Vintage Cellars
2007 Maison Champy Bourgogne Chardonnay
Pale yellow in colour with quite an expressive nose of grapefruit and citrus with touches of melon and light spice. A vibrant palate but quite lean and lacks detail with citrus fruits predominately and a touch of soft spice. A reasonable effort at the Bourgogne level but not one I’ll be sourcing again. Slightly underpowered and truncated on the finish. Just scraped into a good rating from average territory.
Rated: Good
Value:
RRP: $30
Alcohol: 13%
Closure: Screwcap
Drink: Now-2010
Tasted: 14/8/09 Open Label
Distributor: Vintage Cellars
Website: www.champy.com
Stockist: Vintage Cellars
Phillipe has a good bloodline….his uncle is Beaujolais guru Marcel Lapierre and he follows the non-interventionalist cellar techniques of the grand-daddy of natural winemaking, Jules Chauvet. He was winemaker at Domaine Prieure-Roch until 1999 and now produces his own wine from fruit sourced from rented vineyards. He describes his winemaking approach “I work exclusively with old vines, harvested late and fermented with natural yeasts, no destemming, very little new wood [never more than 25%] and hand bottled, generally with no filtration, after a long élevage. While I don’t bottle barrel by barrel, pretty much everything that I do is designed to let the wines make themselves.“
Pale yellow in colour with a striking nose of peach and pear fruit, marzipan, nougat, spice and almond paste with a touch of nettle. It smells pure and pithy.
On the palate it is concentrated and pure with peach, grapefruit and nashi pear fruit characters, soft spices and marzipan, dredged with minerality and crystalline in structure with a pleasing texture and weight in the mouth. Quite an elegant wine but one with some sinewy, pithy elements that get you thinking about how the wine was made. It really needs a good decant before drinking. Anyway….I like him because in some photo’s he looks like the singer from MC5.
Rated: Very Good
Value: (Recommended)
RRP: $150
Alcohol: 13.5%
Closure: Cork
Drink: 2010-2015
Tasted: 3/8/09 Open Label
Distributor: Andrew Guard Wines
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