1984 DRC Romanee St. Vivant disappoints
Adventures Of A Black Belt Sommelier
Why vintage is so important in Burgundy
Welcome back to Adventures of a Bike Belt, Somaie. Burgundy has often been referred to as the wine of heartbreak because so often you open something that you expect to be really extraordinary and it's just not based on the reputation of the vineyard or the reputation of the winery. That's less true now because there's so much information. The thing about Burgundy is of all the wine regions in the world, the vintage is, I think, the most important. Well, the producer is also important, but the vintage is really important and, you know, there's a great documentary on Netflix called, "A Year in Burgundy." It kind of chronicles the lives of four wine makers through the course of the year and what they do and how they make their wines and how just enslaved they are by the weather. There's nothing they can do if it rains at the wrong time. There's nothing they can do, et cetera. But in one scene, there's a scene in Von Romanade, Le Beaumont, where a producer is doing green harvest with a tractor that basically has a lawn mower going out. The tractor straddles a row of vines and it basically has kind of a lawn mower type contraption that sticks out each side about four feet off the ground and this tractor goes down the row and chops off all the vines on either side, and that's this producer's way of doing green harvest. In the next row, in Von Romanade, Le Luby's Loire, the great Le Luby's Loire is accomplishing the same thing by tying the shoots of the vines together one shoot, or two shoots at a time. She's in her 90s doing this personally. Both wines, when they're bottled, are going to say Von Romanade, Premier Crew, Le Beaumont on the label, they are not remotely the same wine. So the producer and the vineyards are really, really important. If it says instrumental to Lao-Wah on the label, or it says domain to the Romani quantity on the label, or it says Armand Russo on the label, or it says domain Ponce on the label, it's probably, it has a chance to be something really extraordinary. Duxiaq would be an example of that. But you know, there are something like 40 different owners of plots in Clove of Gio. Not all of them make great wine. Some of them make great wine. Not all of them make great wines. And it's hard to know, because you lift the label, is this Clove of Gio, a grown crew. And it may even be a great finish. But the intent of the producer is different, so the results in the bottle are different. But this idea of the importance of Vincian since Burgundy was really illustrated to me this past Saturday night, when I was a sommelier at a really amazing wedding reception where there were 90 people at this wedding reception, and the host had given me the task of the wine service, and you know, I was pouring Chateau-Moutreau-Chiele, Chateau-Tropelau, and I'm sorry, Hector Rotobuf, Silver Oak, Napa Valley Cabernet 2000, from a 6-liter bottle. But Hector Rotobuf was from a 3-liter bottle, 1989, in 1990, Chateau crowd will rose. So this wasn't your typical wedding reception. The Champagne was magnums of Molatian, Don Britton, and Britt Rosé, not cooks or socks or Andre. I don't think there are very many for wedding receptions for a first-growth board, those are being poured. But this, the host of the party, at his table, he and his friends were drinking, they had brought wine that they were drinking with the dinner, and one of the bottles was a 1984 domain dollar Romaine Comtee Romaine Sanvigal, which was a grown through, from DRC, which was arguably the greatest producer in Burgundy, certainly one of the top two along with the Maitois, so grown through DRC, 40 years old, I looked on my search a few minutes ago, the lowest price in the world for this bottle is $2,300 plus in the world, and that's in Hong Kong, so that bottle's probably not authentic, because there's a lot of counterfeit wine in your Hong Kong, $2,300. The wine wasn't the least bit special. It didn't taste like Romaine Comtee Romaine, it didn't taste like Great Burgundy, it didn't taste, it was, I mean it was incredibly generous of him to offer me a glass of this wine, because it is so expensive now, I know that he probably bought it in 1987, and it didn't cost $2,300 in 1987, but it's still worth $1,300 a day, and it was a really generous thing of him to offer me this glass of wine, especially he knows that I really love Burgundy anyway, but it wasn't, I mean if you poured me this wine blind, I would say it's not even the caliber of a good California Pinot Noir, I mean it was just, it was just insipid, and old, too old, and no depth, no profoundness, nothing that you would expect from the Grand Prix from DRC, well almost all DRC is Grand Prix, but it's because in 1984 the conditions were not viable for making Great Wine, and only Great Wine matures and improves in the bottle for 40 years, only Great Wine, very very few wines produced in the world are capable of improving the bottle for 40 years, like less than 1%, and this wine was, I don't know, I mean it was just, let's just say it was very disappointing, that wasn't really disappointing because I knew it was 84, and I knew 84 was not a good vintage and it was 40 years old, but it was, you know, I mean I also just looked on Burgundy.com Alimento's site, and he gave it 85 points, honestly I think that's generous, he said, in 1996 he said, drank it soon before the structure overwhelms the fruit, I think it, in 2024, there's almost no fruit left and there's really no structure left, so this is, the point is, the reason Burgundy is the wine of heartbreak, the wine of reason Burgundy is so fraught with disappointment is because the vintage is, well everything, the vineyard is really important to every showerton, Lavos and Jacques, and every showerton, clothes and Jacques, are not the same, one more difference, they're not the same, 1989, in 1988, well or let's say 1989 and 1987, the Grand Prix Burgundy's are not the same, and you know, DRC or Loa and pretty much any other producer are not the same, even though the vineyard's the same, so caveat emptor, as they say, you must take into account the vintage, and it's easy, you can Google, you know, Burgundy vintage charts, it'll tell you which vineyards are great, or if you're Burgundy lover, you can subscribe to Alan Meadows website, it's called Burgham.com by Alan Sir, weirdly, Alan and I are both Vanderbilt University graduates, you know, about from about the same time, I don't know how that kind of occurred, but we were in school at Vanderbilt at the same time, and we both ended up being Burgundy nuts, but Alan is easily the most knowledgeable person about Burgundy in the world, and so if you want good information you can subscribe to this website, I'd suggest it highly if you do love the wines of Burgundy. So that's my diatribe, thanks for being interested, be careful, buy good vineyards, take into account how old the wine is, take into account who the producer is, take into account what specific vineyard it is, all of these things are important, especially when you're spending as much money as you have to spend to buy a bottle of top thyperion in a day, you know, it's the DRC's least expensive wine is like $700, and their most expensive wine is, if you can find a bottle, it's thousands and thousands and thousands, thanks for tuning in to Adventures of the Black Belt Sole May, or you can also ask me, if you want some information, you can ask me, and if I don't know the answer, I'll ask Alan, thanks for tuning in to Adventures of the Black Belt Sole May, we appreciate your time and attention.