Dr Vino's wine blog

Vintage 2013 has been a wet one with flooding across many European wine regions. Today, however, a particularly severe storm dumped hail and lots of rain on parts of Burgundy.

Caroline Parent Gros, who makes wine in the region, tweeted “So far, what we see in the vineyards of Pommard, Beaune & Savigny is, at least, 75% loss. # Burgundy #Storm”

Nicolas Rossignol, a vigneron in Volnay, has been posting some heart-wrenching photos to his Facebook page, including the one above.

France 3 also reported on the storms. Very sad news. We wish all the vignerons well. More photos after the jump. Read more…

On Saturday, the Grand Tasting at La Paulée de New York brought hundreds of consumers and 35 domaines from Burgundy together under one roof. There were only three brief hours to savor the event and since I arrived an hour late, my task made even more difficult–a difficulty that I would gladly shoulder any Saturday, mind you. Each domaine poured four wines, virtually all 2010s, which are so good that that were almost all sold out long ago.Alas, there were still too many to taste them all in the time that I had.

I dove into a raft of 2010 Dauvissat Chablis, wines of such precision and verve, from the Petit Chablis up to the single-vineyard Preuses, that the tasting could have ended there. But it was just getting started: other stand-out whites included the wines of Pierre-Yves Colin Morey, Domaine Leflaive and Comtes Lafon (who had a really nice Volnay too). Read more…

In honor of La Paulée de NYC happening this week, the wine pick this week is from, well, Burgundy. No, this isn’t a Bonnes Mares or a Chambertin, images of which have have been overtaking twitter feeds the past few days. In the language of a panel from La Paulée a few days ago, this is “outer borough” Burgundy, the 2010 Auxey-Duresses from Benjamin Leroux. By day, he’s the winemaker at Le Domaine des Epeneaux (Comte Armand) in Pommard. By night (or something like that), he has his own micro-négoce, meaning he sources grapes and vinifies them in to elixirs such as this.

The 2010 produced some amazing whites and reds in Burgundy and this wines comes from sites that border Meursault, so my expectations were high as I was twisting off the Stelvin closure. I wasn’t disappointed: the fresh acidity and stoniness give the wine a lean core with just a light top-dressing of Golden Delicious apple and a kiss of oak, that will likely become more integrated with some time in the cellar. It’s serious wine at a somewhat reasonable price (especially by Burgundy standards).

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The Invisible Hand seems to be nudging Burgundy prices higher. Or, wait, was it Carla Bruni’s hand?

The presence of the former first lady of France (I doubt they call presidential wives “first ladies,” and it’s not just because it might be premieres crus dames…) at the charity auction for the Hospices de Beaune helped stoke overseas demand: sales hit $7.6 million, a record, on low volume. Eric Pfanner has a good recap over at NYTimes.com.

The executive summary is that supply declined in 2012, while demand appears to be rising. Not a pretty picture for Burgfans.

Burgundy 2012 via Twitter: Jeremy Seysses of Domaine Dujac posts what could be the wine tweet of the year!

Jean-Marc Roulot had a more apt image and caption for the season that has been beset by rain and hail, reducing usable crop to a minimum: Read more…