By Peter Vetsch
[These bottles were provided as samples for review purposes.]
And we’re back. After a brief summer hiatus that involved winery visits, wildfires, new home purchases, way too much packing (with much more to come) and a tiny bit of unplugging from the electronic world, we are hitting the ground running for the impending fall season and have a number of posts lined up for the next few months. Many of them, including the one scheduled after this, focus their attention on uncharted waters: new regions, grapes and bottles, the next frontier of wine exploration. One of the most beautiful things about wine appreciation is that the horizon always stretches farther, and the universe of experience and education is for all practical purposes infinite, allowing for a continual push toward the novel and unexpected. That said, every so often there is value in checking back in with the benchmarks, those classic regions, producers or expressions that have become the North Stars for a particular varietal or style. When we weigh a new vinous experience, we subconsciously measure it against those comparators that first taught us what a given grape or appellation is all about, which can anchor our expectations of what it means to successfully execute concepts like Cabernet Sauvignon, or traditional-method bubbles, or Bordeaux. When the concepts and expectations are shifted to Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Burgundy, one of the key benchmarks and measuring sticks is undoubtedly Joseph Drouhin.
Maison Joseph Drouhin was founded in Beaune in 1880 as a small negociant producer. Three generations later, it is a Burgundian lodestone, with property in nearly 90 different appellations in Burgundy strewn across 80 hectares located from Chablis in the north down to the Cote Chalonnaise in the south, all meticulously purchased over the years. Joseph Drouhin’s four grandchildren now run the estate, including head winemaker Veronique Drouhin-Boss, (who is also in charge of the winery’s excellent Willamette Valley venture Domaine Drouhin Oregon). Drouhin was one of the first producers in Burgundy to do away with chemical pesticides and revert to horse plowing and natural compost in the fields; now all of its estate vineyards are farmed organically and biodynamically. Their dense plantings, arranged to secure low and concentrated yields, hail from vine stocks grown in their own nursery so that the estate can retain full control over plant quality. While Drouhin’s single-vineyard expressions include some of the most rare and sought-after Crus in all of Burgundy, today we explore the baseline Bourgogne appellation wines which return Maison Joseph Drouhin to its negociant roots, using purchased fruit from longtime suppliers located all across Burgundy to craft a template for white and red Burgundy.
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cabernetdialectic (Raymond Lamontagne)
Dan Steeves
Peter Vetsch
tylerderksen
pop & pour 