Lachaux vs Garcia – Ceramics vs Oak – the battle of the Aloxe!

Tasting Burgundies should be and is often quite easy … taste and evaluate … and write the comment and your scores and emotional hearts

But as you peel the layers of the wine, complexity arises. Why is one wine slightly more intense, and why does one apparently have more energy? Often these analyses are guesswork … but on rare occasions, you have two different wines from the same vineyard plot and harvested at the same time … where one can really start to explore the layers. Is it easy … no … but we should try to understand.

The Aloxe battle

This week I had the opportunity to taste two Aloxe-Corton Les Valozieres, one from Charles Lachaux and one from Pierre-Olivier Garcia … harvested from the same vineyard plot in Aloxe-Corton – grapes bought from the same grower!

The grapes are almost identical, but the situation of the plots is a bit different, with Charles Lachaux getting the grapes from a larger part of the plot.

Let’s look at the two wines

---

Pierre-Olivier Garcia Aloxe-Corton Les Valozieres 2023

The Garcia tense with a good livelyness … has a slightly smaller framework than the Lachaux, very harmonious. Also, have a bit of graphite from the contact agent used in the vineyard – and/or the correction for this. Lovely fruit and rose notes when the temperature window is there …. pink roses (core of the blossom) and some red berry fruit … forest strawberries – typical baie-par-baie. Detailed and with a lovely freshness and harmony. More body attached to the flavours … due to the oak. The oak also gives the wine slightly more weight in the finish.

(Drink from 2029) – Fine – (90-92p) –

---

You need to login as a Premium subscriber to read the rest of this article. If you are not a Premium Subscriber, use the subscribe function and sign-up.