Konklusjon; Jean Marc Roulot lager bedre hvitvin enn Etienne Montille !
Chardonnay 2022 Mainque, Bod. Chacra
Pent krydret i en rik stil. Men ikke for voldsomt og flere trodde vi var i hvit burgund land. Delikat og pent eiket. Frisk og fersk og kan såklart fortsatt lagres. men drikker godt nå ! Kr. 500,-. 88 poeng.
Fra winespectrum.com: Made in collaboration with Jean-Marc Roulot. Mainqué is fermented in barrel without malolactic, spending 11 months in barrique. The wine has up-front fruit, a salinity shared with Chacra Chardonnay, and a tasty finish lent by the calcareous components of the alluvial soil.” -Piero Incisa
100% Chardonnay Aged: 18% in concrete eggs, 25% in stainless steel tanks and 57% in French oak barrels (12% new) for 10 months. Vines are own-rooted, farmed biodynamically and organically.
Bodega Chacra owner Piero started a partnership to produce Chardonnay with Meursault legend Jean-Marc Roulot after a chance conversation. Some underperforming old Merlot vines were grafted to Chardonnay and the first vintage was released 2017. More plantings have followed as the region seems very suited to Chardonnays, which are taut, linear and minerally in style.
Bourgogne Le Clos du Chateau 2019, Domaine de Montille
Litt flat og kjønnsløs i stilen og vi får skylde på den varme årgangen. Solid frukt og vinen kan fortsatt lagres. 87 poeng
Bourgogne Blanc 2019, Domaine Roulot
Litt flat og flabby og ikke i nærheten av kvaliteten i 2010 som Knut serverte i sitt siste møte. Men rik og konsentrert frukt, mangler elegansen. Men viser at det kan lages god hvit vin selv i en vanskelig årgang. 90 poeng.
Sanford & Benedict Chardonnay 2019, Racines Wine
Overraskende klassisk US på steroider. Moden frukt, kjølig ananas og selv om den er moderat ekspressiv er det mye tropiske aromaer som overskygger endel annet. Fra kjølige Santa Rita Hills. Et samarbeidsprosjekt mellom Rodolphe Peters, Etienne de Montille & Brian Sieve. Kr. 560,-. 89 poeng
Tre viner med druen Aligotè ble servert. Jeg sa det var en fellesnevner og ingen tok druen ! Men Aligotè er ingen lett drue å ta blindt selv om den i hovedsak vokser i Burgund. Den kan være stram med sitrus og bløtere med blomsterpreg. Jeg synes ofte den mangler eleganse og blir litt grovskåren og nøytral.
Hvit frukt, moden og varm årgang og en relativt rik Aligotè. Lett tropisk, mangler løft og syresnert. Men en grei vin. 83 poeng
Bourgogne Aligotè 2021, Domaine Sylvain Cathiard
Tilbakeholden nese med innslag av citrus og hvite blomster. Større konsentrasjon og indre kraft. Strammere og mer disiplinert enn de andre og flere trodde dette var en Chenin Blanc. 85 poeng
Coteaux Bourguignons Blanc NV, P.A. Larsen
Tropisk og aromatisk på nesa. Endel parfyme og søtladen frukt. Blir uelegant og flabby i glasset over tid. Lav pris kr. 210,-. 20% Aligotè - 80% Chardonnay. 81 poeng
Dn.no; 88 poeng. 15.000 flasker slippes i første omgang. Blanding av 2019, 2020 og 2021 Chardonnay og aligote fra 2022. Dufter av flint, blomster og sitrus. Delikat fersk mineralsk frukt med en frisk syre og tydelige ferske tørrstoffer i en steinete utgang. MB
Stram, lys og transparent. Høy syre, litt undermoden skarp kant. Bør fortsatt lagres. Har endel champagnekarakter og ingen gikk for England på denne. Mangler kompleksitet, noe den kanskje får etterhvert. For den har god frukt. Bra bitt og en produsent som bør følges med på. Men som de fleste engelske musserende; for dyr til kr. 810,-. 89 poeng
Fra the-buyer.net:
When Hundred Hills owner Stephen Duckett and his wife Fiona started looking in 2009 for a property that was suitable for the production of English sparkling wine, they searched the length and breadth of southern England. Their exhaustive quest finally ended in the beautiful Stonor Valley, a few miles north of Henley, in the most quintessential of English rural settings: at Bank Farm, nestled down country lanes, flanked by woodland and situated close to the historic Grade 1 listed Stonor Park, itself lived in by the same family for 850 years and with its own cricket ground.
Attention to detail is the mantra of Duckett, who gained a first in engineering from Oxford University in 1990 when firsts were not doled out as freely as nowadays. That won him a scholarship to Harvard Business School, after which he spent the next two decades helping to establish a number of young software companies. Some such as Iris, Doubleclick and Kronos have become major technology businesses.
As a farmer’s son from Somerset, though, Duckett missed the land, and thanks to an obsession with finding the best place to make wine, he instigated “an enormous amount of frost and airflow modelling as well as soil analysis.” This was performed on 50 sites over three years in Kent, Sussex and Dorset before his focus centred on the Chilterns.
“We looked everywhere,” he mused when I visited him at Bank Farm, aka the Hundred Hills winery, just before harvest, “but we concluded there are real advantages in being inland if you can solve the frost problem. You’re also drier at this time of the year, and there is much less pressure from botrytis and mildews. Last year, a difficult one for both in England, we had a perfectly clean vineyard. We had lots of people coming to see us that couldn’t quite believe it. But here is a textbook valley as it gets a lot of airflow and has no issues with frost.
“Over there is Aylesbury Plain: the bottom of that is minus 3 or minus 4 degrees on the really cold spring nights you worry about – lethal for a vineyard – but at the head of the valley it’s 2 or 3 degrees. That air drifting down the valley is enough to protect you. Steep slopes like we have here help a lot and woodlands a little, and we have frost fans from New Zealand that do a little bit of air movement, but really it’s our position close to the head of the chalk valley that’s so important.”
Hundred Hills just prior to harvest 2022
Apart from airflow and topography, what Duckett also badly wanted was the right soil. “This here was fallow grazing land for over 400 years – no one had used it for anything else,” he continued. “It was very, very poor calcareous soil on chalk. And 250 metres of soft chalk down to an aquifer, so it drains beautifully. Chalk holds those micro-droplets of water in its sub-structure, so in drought the vines get enough water out of the chalk sub-soils to stay healthy.”
Champagne expertise
Having acquired Bank Farm in 2012, Duckett then called on the advice of some Champagne heavyweights ahead of the planting of 17 hectares of vines (all protected two miles of deer-proof fencing). The well-respected Epernay viticulturist, Frank Mazy, who consults for Taittinger’s Domaine Evremond estate in Kent, recommended two low-yielding high quality clones – 95 for Chardonnay and 115 for Pinot Noir. No Pinot Meunier was deemed necessary due to the site’s cool nights and consequent ability to retain acidity. Also part of the advisory team were Dr Michael Salgues, a former winemaker for Roederer in California, and Pierre-Marie Guillaume, a prominent Champagne winemaker and professor of oenology at Montpellier.
While Duckett makes the wines – all of them sparkling with no intention to produce any still ones – he acknowledges that their quality is all down to the vineyard and his Italian viticulturist, Enrico.
“He arrived in 2013 with a rucksack on back and has never left,” Duckett smiled. “Sometimes you just get lucky. I couldn’t be here without him I don’t think. We interviewed about 30 people… mainly French or Italian. When you’re starting up, you need people who lead by example, and Enrico was clearly a doer.”
Being an engineer, it is no surprise Duckett installed 300 sensors in the vineyards.
“These tell you all sorts of things – humidity, leaf wetness, soil wetness etc – but also a lot about nutrient availability. We don’t get eutypa here as we’re so young, and we’re very up on bio-security. We’re just not surrounded by other vineyards. We do employ organic practices although we’re not certified. Effectively we are organic. Downy mildew hit England last year, and this year powdery did. We didn’t get any at all. We have stunning old trees of over 100 years of age, and we’re surrounded by woodland on all sides.”Duckett looks to produce about 50,000 bottles per year.
“We make vintage-only wines that are very terroir-driven,” he said. “Usually in a given year, there are about five or six different wines. Apart from our Zero Dosage label, which gets some partial, we don’t put the wines through malolactic fermentation as that would see the detail of our very clean grapes lost. Regular batonnage adds richness.”
As for sales, which are going extremely well, over 95% of Hundred Hills’ labels are sold in the UK.“W
Champagne Saint Vincent Blanc de Blancs 2012, Legras
Moden stil med strøk av champignon og kjeller. Korken kommer tydelig fram etterhvert. Synd.
