1986 Mâcon-Viré Domaine de Roally Denyse and I were invited to dinner by Henri Goyard in Viré on Sunday night. Henri Goyard retired after the 2000 vintage, but his wines remain for us among the top examples of what Chardonnay can produce in Burgundy. This was a micro-estate of under four hectares, which was bought by the Jean Thevenet family in Clessé, and it might seem patently ridiculous to a Burgundy lover to argue that Goyard's Mâcon-Viré were benchmark White Burgundies with few or any equals. There's no Montrachet here, no Meursault, no Puligny and no Chassagne. Just 3.5 hectares of superb vines that were raised like a personal garden by someone who wanted a very particular type of wine. A Chardonnay of minerality, honey, flowers, length, richness without any of the encumbrances of wood, cellar treatments, enyzmes or yeasts. Goyard was one of the few people in the Mâconnais who worked and plowed his land and made Chardonnays of startling purity. So, we got to taste the 1986 blind the other night. Oddly, I guessed it was 1986 or 1983. This was the wine which convinced Denyse and I to enter the wine trade when we visited Goyard in 1988. He was bottling with Jean Thevenet, with whom he shared a bottling line. The wine was a revelation then and remains today, some twenty years later, one of the great wines I have ever enjoyed. There is more hay, more secondary aromas today, but it remains living and expressive of a great terroir and a meticulous style of work that seems almost lost in Burgundy. After tasted this wine, we spent two years trying to get Goyard to work with us. We then decided to look for other Goyards around France, other stubborn, maniacal vignerons who still wanted to work in purity and without modern affectation. The wine is an expression of the Northern Mâconnais, where the best growers harvest late and often get some botrytis. The 1986 producer about 30% boyrisized grapes and the wine has all the richness, although it is not sweet and it technically dry. Granted our connection is a personal connection and we cannot judge this wine objectively. But does it matter? Goyard has three bottles left. I have perhaps two bottles in my cellar. Maybe someone else has some. Maybe some day, someone else beside Jean Thevent will also be making Chardonnay of this caliber and this beauty. The raw material are out there, it just takes a maniac go bring it back to life. Happy August 15th!
Great stuff Joe.
Wonderful description! Can't you tempt him to come out of retirement? BTW, has Buster read Temoignage?
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