Louis Jadot – a tasting of their 2008 vintage

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Recently I attended a wonderful tasting of fine Louis Jadot Burgundy wines from the 2008 vintage. They were young and need to develop a little, although some were drinking surprisingly well already – but it is so unusual to try such a wide range of famous wines from a single producer and  a single year that I think it is well worth telling you about the experience.

Like the preceding 2007 vintage, 2008 was a difficult year with a wet spring and quite a cold, wet summer making ripeness pretty tricky to achieve. In the end it came down to care in the vineyard and very rigorous selection of the grapes used.

Jacques Lardière

Irancy – the rural side of Burgundy

My visit to Domaine Saint Germain in Irancy, Burgundy

As discussed before in these pages, I am often attracted to more unusual wines, the less familiar, the less famous. I suppose that I always live in hope that these will prove to be undiscovered gems whose time has come – and sometimes that is the case.

Last week I was on a very interesting tour of Burgundy as a guest of the ever generous Burgundy Wine Board (BIVB). We saw many lovely places and tried some great wines, more of which later, but I was excited about a visit to the far North of the region, the Grand Auxerrois. These are vineyards around the town of Auxerre, just 20 km from Chablis, home to the areas’ most famous wine.