I am staying in Beaune, in the heart of the Cote d'Or, for the next month and a half to assist winemaker Alex GAMBAL with his 2009 vendage, or harvest. I am enrolled at the CFPPA viticulture school here in Beaune for the next week, which is required before beginning the vendage work. Today was the first day of the program. After a lecture and some tasting in the morning, we took a rather impressive field trip: touring and tasting at the Hospices de Nuits-St-Georges wine facility, visiting the hallowed Romanée-Conti vineyard, and touring and tasting at Domaine Lucien JACOB.
Hospices de Nuits-St-Georges punch down device.
The cuvée is punched down just 4-6 times here.
Hospices de Nuits-St-Georges
The cave at Hospices de N-S-G.
Pretty empty right now, as they have usually moved all of the sold wine out by March/April
Wine is sold in barrels to négociants, the Hospice de NSG does not bottle the wine themselves.
Clos de Vougeot
Romanée-Conti. What a pilgrimage, what a day!
Now if I can only get into the cellars at DRC..
I don't have any pictures from the cellars at Lucien Jacob but they are worth a description. The tasting room is actually down in the cellar, walls covered in a thick blanket of fuzzy black mould. A very friendly and humerous Jean-Michel Jacob tasted us through some of his 2007 whites, and then a couple of vintages of the Savigny 1er Les Peuillets, a plot that has a bit deeper soil than the stonier Les Vergelesses. His wines highlight their respective terroirs, I was impressed. I noticed a pallet of his wines with Rosenthal import labels. We finished with a taste of his Créme de Cassis, Framboise and Mûre. A delicious aperitif when mixed with his Rosé de Bourgogne or Crémant de Bourgogne!
