Spectator Wine Club
Auberon Waugh
The chief appeal of this offer is the first wine on the list. For 12 months I have been tasting first 1982 then 1983 red Burgundies, searching for a single example which might compare in price and quality with the spectacular Avery's house wine called St Vincent Monopole 1978 which I was able to offer a few years ago. In the course of this search I have suffered. There are some good 1982s around and some 1983s which may well prove to be excellent, but the humblest village Burgundies from these two years generally start at around £7, and at the cheapest end of the market the '82s are simultaneously flabby and thin while the 1983s are disgustingly austere and tannic, with very little fruit in the mouth and no natural sugar at all (this concept of `natural sugar' as a desirable ingredient in young Burgundy is my own discovery, at which the whole wine trade sneers, but it is the only phrase to describe a quality which young Burgundy must have if it is not to suffer a thin, sour or jaundiced old age).
At any rate, like Archimedes, I have found it. The village of Coulanges la Vineuse, at the extreme north of Burgun- dy, within spitting distance of Chablis, has never, so far as I know, hit the jackpot before. Its wines have scarcely been noticed in this country. Certainly, I had
never heard of them. But in the heat of 1982, when nearly everybody to the south was over-producing in thin, flabby streams, someone called Paul Dupressoir seems to have achieved a miracle in Coulanges la Vineuse (1). At £3.86 the bottle, it is a really grapy, thick, old-style Burgundy which drinks deliciously now with food; if taken without food it has a good tannic bite at the end which makes me suppose it will hold together for many years, and might go on improving for seven or eight. Only its colour — rather paler than anyone would guess from the taste — betrays its northern origins. But the taste, as I say, is magnifi- cent. I had all but despaired of finding a decent, cheap post-1978 red Burgundy I could rave about. This one should keep Burgundians happy for many years.
Having mentioned Avery's 1978 house- wine called St Vincent Monopole I should, perhaps, warn that the wine they are selling (quite properly) under this label now is not the same as the one I raved about two years ago. It is a perfectly decent Beaujolais-style wine with a good gamay taste, but quite different from the Chalon- nais pinot of which I still have some examples in my cellar. The earlier label was printed in Gothic letters, the new one in copper-plate. I hope to run an Avery's offer next month, but meanwhile, for those who yearn for older vintages and instant cellars, I might mention that Avery's have at last produced a computer print-out of their entire stocks of older wine, available from Mr Richard Meyer, at 7 Park Street, Bristol BS1 5NG (telephone 0272-214141). It is a fascinating document, with many extraordinary wines, all cellared in opti- mum conditions. Possibly some of their prices might be open to negotiation. I do not know. I was interested to see that they have found another 22 cases of their
unforgettable Nuits St Georges Roncieres 1969, which the Spectator Wine Club was generously allowed to offer at £9 the bottle two years ago. The new price is £17.39 the bottle, but I should judge even that price a bargain by the standards of old Burgundy, which is rapidly becoming unprocurable, as well as being unreliable on quality. So much for my Great Discovery of the Month from Coulanges la Vineuse. The Morey St Denis 1981 from J. C. Bousset (2) impressed me by the way its backbone of iron and tannin — which I initially judged too strong to support its fruit faded in the glass to a good, dusty pinot taste with some of that essential natural sweetness I keep boring on about. Once again, it is paler than it should be, and I doubt whether it will hold what colour it has. But it tastes more expensive than its £7.29 the bottle, and I should judge it a good stop-gap until the much more expen- sive 1983s come into line.
Whichever way one looks at it, £8.55 is a pig of a price for a Chablis premier cru, but this Montmains 1983 from Geisweiler (3) was easily the best of the ones I tasted. The year has been much vaunted for its white Burgundies, but in my experience all the best wine was made in the south, especially in the Maconnais. There will be no 1985 Chablis at all, and the 1984 is both inferior (for the most part) and up to 50 per cent more expensive. This example is splendidly fat on the nose, a little flat on first acquaintance but filling out into quite a serious wine — as it jolly well should be at this price.
I include the Beaune Greves de l'Enfant Jesus 1982 (4) chiefly for modern Bur- gundy fanatics. It is very pale, with a good pinot smell and a cripplingly elegant light pinot taste (fashionably called 'subtle') but not enough of it for my own gross predilec- tions. It has a surprisingly strong bite at the end, out of all proportion to its initial bark — more of a 'woof', really. But it might make some rich wooftah very happy in a few years' time.
Le Corton 1978 (5) at its murderous price of £18.92 the bottle is at the opposite end of the aquarium. A knock-out smell, or terrific nose, as one prefers, and colossal Burgundian attack, it settles into a really excellent, heavy wine in the middle stretch- es ending in a most unusual — and, to me, quite delicious — light acid finish. If it weren't for the abominable price, I would judge this the most interesting wine I had tasted for a long time, but you simply cannot buy 1978 grand cru Burgundy for less, and it is no good pretending you can. I . imagine that in three or four years' time it will settle into a conventionally excellent heavyweight Burgundy, but I was fascin- ated to taste it at this stage in its develop- ment. Compared to all the Vougeots and other grands crus I have tasted recently, this one promises to be a real stunner. The first wine, from Coulanges, is a really beautiful, traditional middle-weight Bur- gundy at a fifth of the price and I am proud to have found it.
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