An Atherton Paulée: From 1900 Madeira to Coche-Dury Blind

There are carefully planned wine dinners, where every bottle has its place in the sequence and everything proceeds in a sensible order.

And then there are evenings when all plans eventually give way to glorious chaos.

This one began with a private recital in Atherton, followed by an extraordinary evening of wine among a group of serious wine lovers. There was no formal tasting lineup. Bottles were simply opened and shared, initially with something resembling a logical progression and later with increasingly little regard for appellation, vintage or conventional serving order.

It gradually turned into something resembling a miniature Paulée.

Champagne gave way to white Burgundy, then mature Burgundy, Rhône and California. But eventually bottles simply started materializing. A La Turque suddenly appeared. Then more Burgundy. Champagne returned. A 1900 Madeira entered the picture. An 1868 Armagnac followed. And just when the evening surely had to be over, the host produced a mystery white Burgundy and poured it blind.

The lineup was extraordinary, but—as so often happens—the biggest labels didn't necessarily produce my biggest experiences.

NV Pierre Moncuit Blanc de Blancs — Magnum, Disgorged 2016

We started with a magnum of Pierre Moncuit Blanc de Blancs, disgorged in 2016.

Pierre Moncuit is a family domaine in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, one of the great Chardonnay villages of the Côte des Blancs. The family has been growing vines there since the late nineteenth century, and the domaine remains particularly associated with the chalky, mineral character of Mesnil Chardonnay.

This was a fitting beginning: focused, chalky and linear, with freshness and precision taking precedence over richness.

It would prove to be a fascinating counterpoint to the Champagne that followed.

2009 Dom Pérignon

The 2009 Dom was almost the stylistic inverse of the Moncuit: solar, broad and delicious, with ginger, ripe orchard fruit and plenty of yellow-fruited richness.

2009 was a warm, generous Champagne vintage, and the wine wasn't hiding it. But neither did it feel clumsy or excessively mature. It was simply generous and immediately pleasurable.

I quite enjoyed it and thought it was drinking beautifully now.

Side by side, these first two bottles provided a wonderful opening contrast: the Moncuit all chalk, line and restraint; the Dom all amplitude, ginger and ripe fruit.

2014 Blain-Gagnard Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Caillerets

Then came a beautiful 2014 Caillerets.

Blain-Gagnard was created when Jean-Marc Blain married Claudine Gagnard, bringing together two Burgundian families in Chassagne-Montrachet. Caillerets is one of the village's most highly regarded premiers crus, its name appropriately referring to the stony, limestone-rich ground.

I normally think of 2014 white Burgundy in terms of acidity, tension and cut, and the Caillerets certainly had the vintage's mineral backbone and freshness. But what surprised me was how round, luscious and relatively soft it had become, much more so than many other 2014s I've had. There was plenty of acidity underneath, but by this point it was integrated into a generous, almost creamy texture rather than dominating the wine. Beautifully balanced and drinking very well.

A lovely wine—and, unfortunately, a difficult act to follow.

2020 François Raveneau Petit Chablis — Magnum

Because what followed was a magnum of Raveneau Petit Chablis.

The combination of Raveneau and Petit Chablis is one of those wonderfully absurd Burgundian juxtapositions: perhaps Chablis's most revered domaine making wine under the region's humblest appellation.

Raveneau's Petit Chablis is actually a relatively recent addition to the domaine, from vines planted on the plateau above the grands crus. And despite the appellation on the label, it receives the kind of meticulous treatment one would expect from Raveneau.

In another setting I suspect I would have spent much more time with it. But immediately after the luscious Caillerets, the Raveneau felt almost aggressively austere and saline.

All I could think was:

This wine needs oysters.

A useful reminder that tasting order can occasionally be as important as what's in the bottle.

2002 Château de la Maltroye Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru — Magnum

Then came one of my wines of the night.

Bâtard-Montrachet isn't generally accused of being shy. It is one of the broadest and most powerful expressions of Chardonnay in Burgundy, and 2002 gave white Burgundy an excellent combination of ripeness and acidity. In magnum, this bottle was magnificent.

But it wasn't sheer power that captivated me. It was the aromatics.

A Middle Eastern spice souk in a glass.

Turmeric. Ginger. Curry. Saffron. Warm exotic spices woven through mature Chardonnay. There was clearly some oxidative development here, but to me it manifested itself much the way it sometimes does in older Savennières—not as tiredness, but as this fascinating transformation from primary fruit into savory, exotic spice. The wine was broad, soft and mature, yet still very much alive.

These are the experiences that make mature white Burgundy so compelling to me. Not merely fruit becoming older, but Chardonnay transforming into something you would never have imagined from the young wine.

Beautiful.

1976 Pierre Bourée Fils Chambolle-Musigny

Remarkably sound at fifty years old.

Pierre Bourée represents an older Burgundian tradition, a long-established Gevrey-based négociant-éleveur rather than one of today's cult domaines.

The wine itself was alive, elegant and in genuinely good condition.

But it wasn't profound.

That's worth saying because old wine sometimes gets an automatic halo merely for surviving. A fifty-year-old Burgundy being alive is fascinating; a fifty-year-old Burgundy being great is something else.

This was the former.

1996 Paul Jaboulet Aîné Hermitage La Chapelle — Magnum

Now things became serious.

La Chapelle is one of the historic monuments of Hermitage, assembled from parcels across that extraordinary granite hill above the Rhône. The greatest vintages of La Chapelle rank among the reference points for Syrah anywhere in the world.

The 1996 came from a cooler, more structured Northern Rhône vintage and was considered a fairly backward wine in its youth. Thirty years later, particularly from magnum, it had reached a beautiful place.

This was astounding and one of my favorite wines of the evening.

Fine in texture and beautifully balanced, with plenty of dark fruit still remaining beneath the developing savory complexity. At 30, particularly from magnum, this was mature enough to be compelling but clearly nowhere near exhausted.

Later in the evening it would face a formidable Côte-Rôtie counterpart, and the comparison became one of the highlights of the night.

1998 Ridge Monte Bello

From Hermitage to the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The 1998 Monte Bello was remarkably youthful.

1998 was a difficult, cool and extraordinarily late California vintage. But Monte Bello is itself an unusual California Cabernet site—high above Silicon Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains, cool, limestone-rich and naturally suited to long, slow ripening.

The final 1998 blend was 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot and 1% Cabernet Franc, at only 12.4% alcohol.

At twenty-eight years old, it still seemed to have plenty left.

That probably shouldn't surprise me as much as it did. Monte Bello has always behaved more like a mountain claret than the stereotypical image of rich California Cabernet: structure, acidity and slow development rather than immediate plushness.

2008 Winter Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

I knew relatively little about Winter, so this was an interesting one to research afterward.

Winter was a tiny Napa project founded in 2004 by Rob Winter, a Napa Valley custom-home builder who decided to make his own Cabernet. The project was based around St. Helena at the foot of Spring Mountain, with Mike Hirby as winemaker, and was unusually focused: essentially one serious Cabernet Sauvignon, primarily from estate fruit supplemented with selected Napa sources.

The 2008 was well made, concentrated and clearly still young, with the density and structure of serious Napa Cabernet.

I don't think the wine got a particularly fair hearing that evening. Surrounded by mature Hermitage, Monte Bello and eventually much older California Cabernet, its concentration made it seem relatively monolithic.

My reaction wasn't too much so much as:

Not yet, and not here.

It needs considerably more time and probably a different context in which it can have more attention to itself.

2012 Y d'Yquem

Then we jumped back to white wine.

Y is Château d'Yquem's dry white—not a second wine of the famous sweet Yquem, but a separate dry bottling based on Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon. It is made in very small quantities and given serious barrel élevage.

The 2012 was creamy, substantial and very well put together.

But white Bordeaux remains one of those categories I intellectually appreciate more than emotionally crave. Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon and Bordeaux élevage can produce unquestionably serious wine; it simply doesn't hit me the way great Burgundy, Chablis or Riesling does.

This was a good Y and I enjoyed drinking it.

I'm just still not sure I entirely get white Bordeaux.

1995 Trimbach Riesling Cuvée Frédéric Émile — Magnum

This, on the other hand, I got.

Frédéric Émile is one of Trimbach's historic wines, coming from the Geisberg and Osterberg grands crus above Ribeauvillé. Trimbach traditionally didn't emphasize those Grand Cru names on the label, preferring the identity of the cuvée itself.

The style is quintessential old-school Trimbach: dry, structured, mineral and built for extremely slow development.

And this was a magnum.

At 31 years old, it still seemed remarkably young. More interestingly, it changed substantially over the course of the evening. Initially tauter and more restrained, it gradually became rounder, fuller and increasingly expressive.

It seemed to be gaining rather than fading.

I could easily imagine this improving for another twenty years.

One of the more educational bottles of the evening: great Frédéric Émile already ages at a glacial pace, and magnum slows the clock further. Thirty-one years may simply not be very old for this wine.

And somewhere around here, any meaningful concept of a tasting sequence began to disappear.

1969 Inglenook Napa Valley “Red Pinot”

Old Inglenook is fascinating California history.

Founded by Gustave Niebaum in 1879, Inglenook became one of the foundational estates of fine California wine. By 1969 the property had already passed out of the great John Daniel Jr. era, but even the terminology on this bottle—“Red Pinot”—transports you to another period of American wine.

The bottle was in remarkably good condition.

Like the 1976 Chambolle, however, it was more interesting than great. A pleasure to experience and an impressive survivor, certainly, but not something I would elevate simply because of its age.

1969 Robert Mondavi Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

This was much more compelling.

Robert Mondavi opened his Oakville winery in 1966, making this a bottle from only the fourth vintage of one of the estates that would help define modern Napa Valley.

And there on the label:

12% alcohol.

The wine was excellent—savory, restrained and beautifully balanced, without excess sweetness, extraction or alcohol. The proportions simply worked beautifully for my palate.

Old California bottles like this increasingly make me question the shorthand claim that I don't particularly like Napa Cabernet.

Apparently I like Napa Cabernet just fine.

Perhaps what I don't particularly like is a particular later expression of Napa Cabernet: riper, higher in alcohol, sweeter-fruited and more heavily extracted.

This 1969 needed none of that to have presence.

1991 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie La Turque

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, 1991 La Turque appeared.

This was another of my favorites.

La Turque is one of Guigal's celebrated “La La” Côte-Rôties, along with La Mouline and La Landonne. It is a tiny single-vineyard wine from the Côte Brune, predominantly Syrah with a small proportion of Viognier, famously given extremely long élevage in new oak.

At thirty-five years old, the texture was gorgeous: silky, noticeably smoother than the 1996 La Chapelle, and actually fuller-bodied.

And then there were the aromatics.

This is where Côte-Rôtie gets me. It nearly always seems more perfumed than Hermitage: flowers, savory complexity and especially those wonderful wild peppercorns.

I kept mentally comparing it with the La Chapelle from earlier in the evening.

The Hermitage had fine texture, beautiful maturity and a more traditional savory structure, but wasn't quite as smooth. La Turque was silkier and fuller, with the more exuberant aromatic personality I associate with Côte-Rôtie.

It's genuinely difficult for me to choose between these two particular bottles.

As a wine type, though, I generally prefer Côte-Rôtie. That wild, peppery perfume is difficult for me to resist.

And then it was back to Burgundy.

2011 Domaine Dujac Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru

A very nice Dujac.

Dujac was founded by Jacques Seysses in 1968 and became one of the defining domaines of Morey-Saint-Denis, particularly associated with significant whole-cluster fermentation.

The 2011 Charmes was elegant and polished, with that characteristic Dujac aromatic personality.

But ultimately I found it quite good rather than profound. It didn't have tremendous depth and certainly wasn't one of those Burgundies that stops conversation.

Nothing wrong with that. Not every grand cru needs to become an epiphany.

2015 Domaine Prieuré Roch Vosne-Romanée Les Hautes-Maizières

Another very different expression of Burgundy.

Prieuré Roch was founded by Henry-Frédéric Roch, who was also co-director of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. His own domaine pursued a deliberately low-intervention style, including extensive whole clusters and minimal manipulation.

Les Hautes-Maizières is a small village-level parcel in Vosne-Romanée, immediately below premier cru Les Suchots—rather serious real estate for a village wine.

This was good wine, with attractive fruit and personality, although I picked up a few hints I associate with natural winemaking, particularly something slightly carbonic or fermentation-derived in the aromatic profile.

Not flawed, and certainly not something I would dismiss as merely “natural wine.” Just a recognizable stylistic signature.

1969 Richebourg Grand Cru — Sichel & Fils Frères

The words “Richebourg 1969” inevitably create expectations.

Richebourg is one of the six grands crus of Vosne-Romanée and one of Burgundy's most revered vineyards. Roughly eight hectares in size, it sits on the mid-slope immediately north of Romanée-Conti, in the extraordinary strip of vineyards that makes Vosne perhaps Burgundy's most celebrated village.

Stylistically, Richebourg traditionally represents the powerful and voluptuous side of Vosne-Romanée: more muscular and imposing than the ethereal stereotype of Romanée-Conti, while retaining the perfume and complexity associated with Vosne.

But this wasn't a domaine bottling from DRC, Leroy, Gros or another famous Richebourg proprietor. It was bottled by Sichel & Fils Frères, négociants in Beaune.

That distinction matters with Burgundy this old. In that era négociants commonly purchased wine or grapes from growers, performed or completed the élevage and bottled the wine under their own labels. Comparing an old négociant Richebourg directly with today's domaine bottlings can therefore be misleading.

Still, the wine itself was impressively concentrated and in very good condition at 57 years old—a character entirely believable for Richebourg.

What kept it from being great was an odd bitter note that persisted through the wine and prevented everything from becoming completely harmonious.

At this age, I wouldn't pretend to know its origin. Old élevage, remaining phenolics, bottle development or provenance could all play a role.

A fascinating opportunity to experience mature Richebourg from another era, impressively vigorous, but not one of the great wines of the evening.

1999 Comte Georges de Vogüé Musigny Grand Cru Cuvée Vieilles Vignes

And eventually one of Burgundy's grandest names entered the fray.

Comte Georges de Vogüé is almost inseparable from Musigny. The domaine owns roughly seven hectares—most of the entire grand cru—and its Vieilles Vignes bottling is one of Burgundy's historic reference wines.

1999 is also a major red Burgundy vintage.

The striking thing was how young the wine remained at twenty-seven years old.

Impressive, certainly, but it never quite became transcendent for me that evening.

Perhaps it simply needs substantially more time. Perhaps it was the environment. Delicate Burgundy doesn't necessarily have an easy job when La Turque has recently exploded into the room and glasses of numerous other wines are circulating.

In fact, this became one of my bigger surprises of the night.

Despite an extraordinary Pinot lineup—Musigny, Richebourg, Charmes-Chambertin, Vosne-Romanée, Chambolle-Musigny—none of the Pinot Noirs showed as truly epic.

Sometimes that's wine.

1999 Bollinger R.D. — Magnum

At some point Champagne returned, in the form of a magnum of 1999 Bollinger R.D.

R.D.—Récemment Dégorgé—is Bollinger's late-disgorged vintage Champagne, given very long aging on its lees before disgorgement. The idea is a fascinating combination: the complexity of prolonged lees aging with the freshness that comes from being disgorged relatively late.

Even at twenty-seven years old, and from magnum, this was young, powerful and muscular.

I've now had the formidable 2008 Bollinger R.D. twice earlier this year, and I'm beginning to understand that this is simply the nature of the beast.

Bollinger R.D. isn't merely capable of aging.

It needs it.

The 2008 is an even greater powerhouse, but this 1999 reinforced the lesson: don't rush serious R.D., particularly in magnum.

2014 Vineland Estates Vidal Icewine

A dramatic palate change: Canadian Vidal Icewine from Niagara.

Vidal's thick skins and winter hardiness make it particularly suited to Canada's naturally frozen harvest. The grapes remain on the vines until they freeze, concentrating both sugar and acidity.

Amid everything else happening by this stage, I didn't spend enough time with it to form a meaningful judgment.

2004 Dal Forno Romano Vigna Seré Passito Rosso

Another fascinating rarity, from my cellar.

Vigna Seré is Dal Forno's sweet passito red, made from dried Veneto varieties—Corvina and Corvinone along with grapes such as Croatina, Oseleta and Rondinella. It belongs broadly to the same cultural universe as Recioto, filtered through Dal Forno's famously obsessive approach to concentration.

And Recioto was exactly what it tasted like to me.

The wine was extremely juicy and primary, packed with sweet dark fruit and enormous concentration. What surprised me was how little tertiary development it seemed to show despite already being more than twenty years old.

There is clearly a lot of material here, but for me it needs considerably more time to become truly special.

Right now the primary fruit dominates. What I'm waiting for is the secondary and tertiary complexity that can turn all that concentration into something more nuanced.

Rather than being impressed simply because this is a rare Dal Forno, my takeaway was:

Come back much later.

1900 D'Oliveiras Malvazia Reserva Madeira

And then came something that simply broke my frame of reference.

1900 Madeira.

D'Oliveiras is one of Madeira's extraordinary custodians of old wine. Unlike producers that bottled and sold through their historic stocks, D'Oliveiras became famous for retaining extraordinary quantities of old Madeira in cask and bottling them gradually over generations.

Malvazia—Malmsey—is traditionally the richest and sweetest of Madeira's classical noble varieties, its sweetness held in tension by the island wines' extraordinary acidity.

What was mind-boggling wasn't that a wine from 1900 remained drinkable.

It was how young and fresh it tasted.

At 126 years old.

Madeira's combination of fortification, enormous acidity and deliberate exposure to heat and oxygen creates a wine almost uniquely resistant to the normal mechanisms of aging. In a sense, the forces that destroy ordinary table wine have already been incorporated into Madeira's creation.

I understand that intellectually.

Drinking this was something else entirely.

I simply don't have enough reference points for a wine born at the beginning of the twentieth century that tastes as though time has somehow stopped applying to it.

Extraordinary.

1868 Lagarde Bas-Armagnac

And then we went back another 32 years.

1868 Bas-Armagnac.

This one required some research afterward because Lagarde isn't a name I knew, and there is surprisingly little readily available history of the producer. But the bottle is not an isolated curiosity. A recent specialist auction featured another 1868 Lagarde Bas-Armagnac, followed by a remarkable sequence of Lagarde vintages including 1888, 1900, 1904, 1918 and numerous vintages through the 1920s and 1930s. That suggests a house or négociant that maintained a substantial library of old vintage Armagnacs.

And the date needs some explanation.

1868 is the distillation vintage, not the bottling date. Unlike wine, Armagnac stops meaningfully aging once it is transferred from wood into glass. Old Armagnacs could therefore spend extraordinary periods in cask—or eventually in glass demijohns after reaching the desired maturity—before finally being bottled for sale.

The handwritten information on this bottle appeared to indicate that it was bottled on April 9, 2003. That initially seemed almost unbelievable: a spirit distilled in 1868 being bottled 135 years later. But it is entirely consistent with the way collections of extremely old Armagnac were handled. A specialist who recently auctioned a collection containing this exact Lagarde vintage noted that many nineteenth-century Armagnacs in the collection had remained with producers and were only bottled in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

And this was Bas-Armagnac, the westernmost and generally most celebrated of Armagnac's three principal terroirs. Its sandy, iron-rich sables fauves soils traditionally produce Armagnacs prized less for brute force than for perfume, finesse and extraordinarily complex development with age.

Just contemplate the date for a moment.

In 1868, Ulysses S. Grant was elected President. The first transcontinental railroad in the United States had not yet been completed. The Eiffel Tower was still almost two decades in the future.

The grapes that became this Armagnac were harvested and distilled 158 years before we drank it.

Unfortunately, I have very little useful tasting commentary to offer.

By this point it was very late, we'd tasted a frankly ridiculous range of wines, cigars had appeared, and I had a mouth full of cigar smoke. Trying to reconstruct an elaborate list of aromas now would be completely artificial.

Rather than manufacture profundity after the fact, I'll leave the tasting note at this:

I drank an 1868 Bas-Armagnac.

Sometimes the history in the glass is enough.

2021 Coche-Dury Meursault — Blind

Except apparently the evening still wasn't finished.

At the very end, the host produced one final mystery bottle and poured it blind.

I immediately thought high-quality white Burgundy.

It was youngish, grippy, textured and concentrated, with enough authority that I wondered whether it might be Corton-Charlemagne.

Nobody guessed the producer or appellation.

The reveal:

2021 Coche-Dury Meursault.

My first Coche Meursault.

I was wrong about the vineyard but rather pleased with the read. What I had identified wasn't Corton-Charlemagne specifically—it was the wine's quality and structural intensity.

Coche-Dury is one of the defining domaines of Meursault, and one of its remarkable characteristics is the ability to produce extraordinary density and tactile intensity even from ostensibly humble appellations.

A wonderfully mischievous way to finish the night.

What Actually Stood Out?

With a lineup like this, one might expect the grandest labels automatically to produce the greatest experiences.

They didn't.

The 2002 Bâtard-Montrachet magnum was unforgettable for that extraordinary turmeric-ginger-curry-saffron spice profile.

The 1995 Trimbach Frédéric Émile magnum may have taught me the most. At thirty-one years old it seemed almost youthful and kept gaining breadth throughout the evening. Twenty more years? Quite possibly.

The 1996 La Chapelle and 1991 La Turque formed my favorite comparison. La Chapelle was fine, savory and beautifully mature, with a little more tactile structure. La Turque was silkier, fuller and more wildly aromatic. I couldn't really choose between these particular bottles, although the comparison reminded me why Côte-Rôtie's perfume and wild peppercorn character so consistently seduce me.

The 1969 Mondavi was another revelation: savory, balanced Napa Cabernet at 12% alcohol. Not weak. Not thin. Just beautifully proportioned.

The 1998 Monte Bello reminded me how slowly the great old-school California Cabernets can evolve, while the concentrated 2008 Winter made me think about the same subject from the opposite direction: sometimes a serious young Napa Cabernet simply needs more time than the occasion allows.

The 1900 D'Oliveiras Madeira was intellectually almost incomprehensible. A 126-year-old wine that seemed improbably alive and fresh.

And the blind 2021 Coche-Dury Meursault was a terrific finale. I missed Meursault and Coche but recognized serious, youthful white Burgundy and grand-cru-level structure—which is about as satisfying a blind reveal as I could ask for at the end of an evening like this.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was what didn’t dominate: Pinot Noir. There were enough famous Burgundy names in the room to populate a serious auction catalog, but none gave me the evening’s most memorable wine. The Musigny was impressive but still young; the Dujac lovely without great depth; the Roch good but carrying a slight natural/carbonic signature; the old Chambolle and Inglenook fascinating survivors; and the Richebourg vigorous but compromised by that bitterness.

Somewhat amusingly, the 2009 Faiveley Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Cazetiers I had at a small dinner with friends just the previous weekend gave me more sheer drinking pleasure than any of them. That’s not a judgment about which is the greater wine. Part of it was certainly the setting: at a small dinner I could sit with the Cazetiers, follow it over time and give it my attention, rather than having one remarkable bottle constantly interrupted by the next. But I think it was also simply where the wines were in their evolution. The Cazetiers had landed in that magical drinking window where the fruit and energy are still there, the structure has relaxed, and enough secondary complexity has emerged to make the wine immediately compelling. The Musigny, by contrast, still seemed remarkably young at 27.

That’s one of the great pleasures and frustrations of Burgundy: the grandest wine isn’t necessarily the most pleasurable wine today. Vineyard hierarchy and producer tell you something about potential, but not exactly where a particular bottle will be on its evolutionary curve when you pull the cork. And subtle Burgundy benefits from attention. A Paulée-style evening like this provides an extraordinary breadth of experience, but not necessarily the ideal conditions for every great bottle to reveal everything it has.

That's one reason nights like this are so useful.

Labels establish expectations. The glass gets the final vote.

By the end there was no sensible order left anyway. Burgundy followed Rhône, Champagne returned, ancient Madeira circulated, cigars appeared and Coche-Dury was poured blind.

A private recital in Atherton had gradually turned into a spontaneous little Paulée.

What an evening.