Wine Festival in Copenhagen

This week the Danish importer Domaine Brandis made a very nice Wine festival in Copenhagen, where a lot of his producers presented wines from recent vintages.

For me these Wine festivals are a good chance to taste and retaste the last vintages, and to taste some growers I don’t taste regularly.

My main focus was on the Burgundy wines, and I didn’t taste the very fine range of Italian wines. Instead I had the time and space to make a proper evaluation of most of the Burgundy wines at the tasting. I will publish these tasting notes during the following weeks.

Overall impressions of Red Burgundy 2010 and 2009

The overall impression is two very different but also outstanding vintages. I my view 2010 is clealy the best of the two vintages, as it offer more classical pinot flawors, and a almost unique transparancy and display of terroir. The tannins in 2010 are very fine and ripe, and the brilliant acidity ads to the delicacy of the wines.

The 2009’s offer loads of ripe fruit, they are big, dense and quite pleasent with ripe tannins. They are now more focused, and the terroir is more present in the wines. The 2009 reds are indeed of high quality, and if the terroir is strong, then magic can happen in 2009.

I prefer 2010 for the delicate pinot flavors, the unique transparancy and the wonderful vibrant freshness.

Overall impressions of White Burgundy 2010 and 2009

While the reds are quite evenly matched … this is in my view far from the case with the whites. The difference in style is the same, but the lack of freshness and acidity in most white 2009’s simply is a problem.

The white 2009’s are big wines, displaying a lot of exotic fruits and not much acidity to match the abundant fruit. The 2009 whites are not bad wines, and will drink well, but for my palate most of them are too dense.

The 2010 whites are fresh and vibrant as the reds, and offer fine minerality a very crisp acidity. The whites are perhaps not at the same level as the reds, but it’s really a vintage to go for if you like fresh, vibrant and classical white Burgundy.

Good vintages offer good value

Burgundy and especially the 1. cru’s and Grand Cru’s have becomed very expensive during the last 5 – 10 years. The prices for village wines are still quite moderate .. a least compared to the Grand crus.

The good vintages offer very good concentration and a lot of pleasure at the village level, and 2009 and 2010 is no exception.

I was actually impressed by the quality and price/value of the following:

• Domaine Arlaud, Bourgogne Rouge Roncevie 2010
• Domaine Arlaud, Chambolle Musigny 2010
• Domaine Matrot, Meursault 2007
• Domaine Francois Mikulski, Meursault 2010

These are all elegant wines, with a quite fine terroir expression, and they offer good value at around 40 Euro – the Bourgogne rouge from Arlaud is around 25 Euro.

I know … Burgundy is expensive, but these are nice entry level wines, if you like elegant high quality wines. It’s not Grand Cru level … not 100 points … but they offer pleasure.

I will publish tasting notes for the wines mentioned above within the following week. Stay tuned!