Bad To The Beaune: A Longhorn In Burgundy

After leaving Lamarche we headed a bit further north to the village of Gevery-Chambertin and Rene Leclerc, our final stop of the day. A small, and I do mean small, producer in the region with less than thirty acres of vines, Leclerc has always been a personal favorite of mine. There are two main reasons for this, the first being the presence of an excellent Bourgogne Rouge that normally can be had for under $20 (I’m not sure of 05 pricing yet). The other reason is the one bottle of Grand Cru Burgundy that I own is Rene Leclerc’s Griotte-Chambertin.

But the real reason I wanted to visit Leclerc is I have always been impressed by the elegant and gentle style of the wines. Leclerc avoids the use of new oak whenever possible and wants to make wines that taste great straight out of the bottle. It strikes me as a classic Burgundy that offers plenty of appeal, in both price and style.

Rene Leclerc is still involved in the winery but our visit would be with his son Francois, and upon arriving I was greeted with quite a site: a true Frenchman wearing a Texas Longhorns hat. This was not just something he was wearing as a joke; it was clearly well worn and broken in and I’ve even found pictures on the internet of him wearing it. Just one of those things you never expect to find: a winemaker in Gevery-Chambertin walking around in a UT hat.

Lamarche was a grand and impressive estate, sort of what you imagine when you think of the major names in Vosne-Romanee. Leclerc was the exact opposite. No sign at all, just a long, fairly narrow warehouse type building that was filled with what you would expect (bottles, boxes, rolls of labels, empty pallets, and all the equipment for winemaking and bottling). Downstairs was a very impressive barrel room with a cellar off to the side. Downstairs as Leclerc was the sort of cellar I think you would shoot a movie scene in if you were trying to get the effect of a small, independent winery and maintain some romanticism.

Francois was fluent in French, having studied in Oregon prior to taking over duties at his family’s Domaine. As a result he was fun to talk to and answered some great questions. He spoke to us briefly upstairs and then the group headed down into the basement to do some barrel tasting. I admit that I was suspicious about the philosophy of avoiding new oak, but as soon as we got into the barrel room I was certain this was no posturing. If you visit the California wineries or look at pictures of barrels on-line they are always pristine and clean, with a single plug sticking up out of the top. That was not the case here.

Every one of the barrels was stained with wine, and in most cases it was clear there had been spillage on more than one occasion. All around the plugs keeping the wine from evaporating were the signs of drips that fell on the barrel during a tasting all the way up to what must have been legitimate spills (maybe a glass or so of wine) during filling or topping off. As we went around I talked to Francois about the age of the barrels and he was quite direct in saying he wanted his wine to taste like wine, not like oak.

Something that I should make clear here is Francois was not just talking about the heavy, vanillin type oak we find in over extracted California cabs. Oak doesn’t have to impart a huge level of flavor that overpowers the wine, it only has to alter the overall wine enough that the unique characteristics of the vineyard it comes from are masked. Remember, we’re talking about Burgundy here and nowhere in the world has had more attention and effort devoted to identifying and separating the vineyards that express unique characteristics. At Leclerc the goal is to let those characteristics shine.

We did start off with the Bourgogne Rouge, before moving into the Gevery-Chambertin wines. Leclerc makes a straight Gevery along with three single-vineyard Gevery wines and the Grand Cru Griotte-Chambertin. Tasting through the four different Gevery wines was interesting. As I’ve said before I don’t really have enough experience to pinpoint the individual traits that define each vineyard, but I did sense the overall Gevery-Chambertin characteristics: big, strong, rich Pinot Noir. However, the wines were not overbearing or intrusive. The fruit and the terroir were the real drive behind each of these wines with the variances coming in terms of spice and smoke, and to a certain extent the structure of the wine. I’ve been well apprised of the challenges you face when making predictions about barrel samples, but in my opinion these wines (2006 vintage) will probably show some truly beautiful Burgundian elements at a young age, probably just as soon as the bottle and travel shock wears off.

Moving on we also tasted the Griotte-Chambertin from the barrel, and it was the wine of the day. While I can’t claim to have expert knowledge with Grand Cru Burgundy I should point out that over the past four months I’ve had several (compared to zero up until then). I feel the one thing that makes them stand out the most to me is the complexity. I’ve had Burgundy that is delicious, and I’ve had Burgundy that I truly feel expresses a specific terroir, but the common thread amongst the Grand Cru wines is an amazing level of complexity in all areas: they are light and refined yet structured and defined, they have rich, deep aromas of smoke and spice and bring to mind the actual soil the grapes come from but have flavors of ripe fruits and sweet berries. And most importantly of all, they pull it off without it feeling like a contradiction or a train wreck.

After the barrel sampling was over we moved over the cellar room and Francois opened some catalog bottles for us. I don’t think it was the goal, but he certainly demonstrated that just because the wines are light and elegant doesn’t mean they won’t age. He opened bottles going back to 1998, and then just for fun grabbed and 1988 and a 1978 Gevrey-Chambertin single vineyard (I’m pretty sure they were Combe Aux Moines) and the 1988 was still showing quite well. Admittedly the fruit was fading a touch, but the structure was proper and the acids were still balanced. There was nothing wrong with the 1978, but in truth the fruit was missing; at twenty years of age the wines were still standing up proud, but by age thirty the life was gone.

I did get to ask Francois some interesting questions, and to put it mildly he was quite honest. Our talk offered me some very powerful and useful insight into not just the winemaker in Burgundy—where the goal is for the winemaker to have as little impact on the wine as possible—but into the philosophy of Old World winemakers in general. There are a few topics I will revisit after I finish blogging about each of the visits, and you can certainly expect Francois to show up in some of those.