What's Pressoir Drinking?
August 1, 2020
by Raj Vaidya
I recently passed a milestone birthday, and nothing makes an aging former sommelier feel younger than noting that the wines of his birth vintage are starting to decline, because I certainly feel healthier and more fit than most red Burgundy from 1980. ‘80 was a slyly great vintage for a long time, underestimated by many in the 80’s but appreciated by those in the know. Today, most of the reds are slowly coming apart. But the whites from the vintage are largely panned as mediocre in the best cases, terrifically bad in the worst. And so though I had a number of red Burgs I wanted to enjoy with friends of the same age this year, my one bottle of white Burgundy was something I placed very little value on. As it turns out, a very nice surprise awaited me…
I once asked Dominique Lafon about his memories of the Domaine des Comtes Lafon before he took over in the early 80’s, and he shared one with me which stuck out as hilarious and quite telling. Sometime in the late 70’s, he observed a member of the team putting a bin full of fairly botrytised grapes (the same mold that is found in Sauternes to make sweet wines) into a vat and asked him why he hadn’t sorted out the unfit, rotten berries. The fellow replied, “kid, to make a great wine, you need one third perfectly ripe fruit for the longevity, one third underripe fruit for the acidity, and one third botrytised grapes for the sugar concentration!” This hilarious (and today heretical) statement offers a window into common wisdom in the winemaking of the past.
Sure enough, this bottle had a fair bit of botrytis, and upon first opening it all of us present had to comment that it was surprisingly fresh, a very healthy bottle for its age and poor vintage pedigree. But it held a great deal more in store, and as the evening progressed it gained in volume, and in precision and salinity till it reached a plateau which was truly marvelous. Lemon curd, oyster shell and grassy aromas and flavors appeared, seemingly from out of nowhere. The length of the palate grew with air also, furthering our surprise and pleasure. That botrytis concentrates sugars, and thereby ripeness in a wine is well understood, but what I realized from this wine was that the botrytis concentrates everything; by allowing the water in the juice to evaporate the concentration of not only the sugars but the acids rise as well. If you squint at the less than ideal picture I managed to take on this hot evening in Tribeca, you can notice an (empty) tin of caviar through the glass sitting on the table. It was the perfect pairing!
Domaine des Comtes Lafon Meursault 1er Cru “Goutte d’Or” 1980
