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Wine Club
Auberon Waugh
Most people who have watched what has been happening to Burgundy prices since 1978 must be sadly aware that in this country our days of drinking good Burgundy are numbered. My own cellar is now prodigiously stocked with the pre-1979 vintages but I have not bought a single bottle of any later vintage, because there seems no sense in paying two or even three times the price of a mature Burgundy — from Berry Bros or Avery's — for a wine (like the 1983s) which will take ten years to mature. The position Is made all the gloomier by the fact that nobody else I have yet discovered has been able to produce half-decent wine from the pinot noir grape, with the single exception of the Vinicola Udinese in northern Italy whose Standard varies wildly from year to year. There are three great advantages to these Berry Bros-bottled wines from Doudet-Naudin apart from the fact that Berry Bros is now the only wine merchant left in England with large stocks of old Burgundy. The first and most obvious is that they are extremely cheap, by the standard of any Burgundy prices anywhere. The second is that they are magnificent, hefty wines with the true smell and taste of old Burgundy as we used to enjoy it in this country before all the commies and pooftahs and psychologists moved in on the scene. The third is that being extremely well bottled, as well as hefty wines, they last for ever, as any punter who lashed out on last year's beautiful 1961 Beaune Clos du Roy will testify. I hoped to include that wine again this year, as I believe it to be about the best Burgundy now on the market. Alas, although they still list it — at £20.20 the bottle — they are guarding their stocks too jealously to allow Spectator readers
loose on them at the generous discount they give us.
Which is why I earnestly advise Burgundy fanciers to spend as they have never spent before on this offer. It is possible I will be able to squeeze another Burgundy Golden Oldie offer out of someone next year, but it will not be easy and I might well not succeed. It really is a question of hurry, hurry while stocks last be- cause after 1978, as I say, there is nothing which any honest Englishman can afford. For this Offer, Berry Bros let me choose from the great variety of their present range, and have given us prices calculated on 7.5 per cent off the old list price, which was already very cheap indeed. Anybody comparing these prices with the new Berry Bros list will see what I mean. , Now for my tasting notes. Some will be put off the 1974 Savigny-lees-Beaune, Les Guettes(1) by its unpropitious year, but I can only say they will be fools. It has a stunning nose and a good, thick taste, cleaner and less burned than the Santenay which was another possibility from this year. At £5.42 for a really mature Burgundy it is a gift. I tasted the Morey St Denis (2) last year and ,aecided that it had a trifle too much acid. A year !ater, rather to my surprise but greatly to my
°Y, as I have a large stock of over-aciduous
1972s in my cellar, it has sorted out its problems. e acid has receded to give a livelier, bouncier Nine than one normally expects from Doudet like whose products, at their worst, can taste !Ike a burned-out and caramelised Chateauneuf du Pape. This Morey St Denis — nice brown
colour, slightly addled smell of old pinot, wonderful long life ahead of it — is my own favourite from the present list, along with the completely different wine that follows. At £7.42 the bottle, we will not see its like again.
The Hospices wine — Cuvee Nicolas Rolin 1973 (3) — is perhaps the odd man out in this group. It is more to the French taste, being considerably paler, almost pinky brown in col- our, with another knock-out smell, more like a declining 1959 grand cru than a 1973, a slight touch of elegantly decaying beech leaves. It is a truly lovely wine, probably now at its peak. .I am not sure I would give it quite as long to live as the others, but Real Burgundy fanatics will like it best and it is a better, fuller example of Real Burgundy than anything else I have found this year. Those who are experts on the Hospices will know that Cuvee Nicolas Rolin is composed of three premiers crus Beaunes: Les Cent Vignes (about 60 per cent), Les Graves (about 25 per cent) and En Genet (about 15 per cent). Steven Spurrier (French Fine Wines) suggests £12.50 to £15 for an Hospices of this year. This costs 18.58.
My tasting notes on the 1970 Charmes Chambertin(4) arc that it is the deepest and blackest of the wines on offer: good strong taste, nice, soft, easy, dry and mature. I am sorry to say it has not stuck in my memory as the two preceding wines managed to do. With the Chambolle Musigny 1971(5) I feel you may be paying a bit extra for the name of the village, which has somehow penetrated into the aware- ness of Americans, restaurant managers and others in a way that the village of Morey St Denis, which produces just as good wine, has somehow failed to do. Also, on the 1971 Chambolle Musigny, one may be paying a little extra for the vintage, which enjoys a better reputation than 1972 or 1970. But I judge a wine by its taste, suspecting that the vintages are often mixed up anyway, and my notes on the 1971 Chambolle are that it is a little short on acid, and is the jammiest of the wines on offer. But at £10, it is bound to be a bargain. Websters Wine Price Guide (Oz Clarke) suggests £15.50 to £22.50 for a 1971 Chambolle, but they are almost impossible to find, and a 1984 will probably cost the same, from a really bad year.
Of course these judgments are relative to a group of remarkably similar wines, all excellent and all utterly delicious. The Savigny may be a little bit short on the finish compared to the others, but only compared to the others. Any old Burgundy fancier will yelp with joy when given it. This is always my happiest offer of the year, and I wish the punters well with it. If my own cellar had nothing else but these wines in it I would be a happy man. Anybody who is really quick off the mark ordering the mixed case should be able to re-order his favourite from the bunch before the offer closes. Berry Bros, being a respectable and efficient firm, will replace any dud bottles — I hope there are none — and 1 would be most grateful to hear from any punter who chooses to buy the mixed case on whether he feels my comments have been fair and accurate.
To guarantee delivery before Christmas, London orders must be received by Berry Bros by Thursday 13 December. Orders for delivery to country areas must be received by Wednesday 5 December.
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