What's Pressoir Drinking? La Paulée de New York Edition...
3/16/2022
By Raj Vaidya
We, the Pressoir community, find ourselves in the throes of back to back La Paulée celebrations, but I wanted to take a moment to reflect on a truly special, once in a lifetime dinner we were honored to host at my alma mater, Restaurant Daniel, last weekend.
Guillaume D’Angerville has become a dear friend over the years. While planning our ideas for the Paulée program for 2022, Daniel and I felt we had to ask a little bit of the impossible of Guillaume; could we do a dinner of exclusively large format bottles of Volnay Premier Cru Clos de Ducs? Guillaume grumbled a bit at first, but then realized this presented a once in a lifetime opportunity to open a bunch of jeroboams that he’s been producing since 2009. We gladly accepted!
The line up started with a flight of Champans, Jeros of 2017, ‘14 and ‘11. While 2011 was a challenging vintage all around the Côte, Guillaume’s wines were likely the most balanced and compelling of the vintage, and this jero confirmed this truth robustly, with an unusual sweetness of fruit for the vintage.
Next two flights of Clos des Ducs, also all from jeros, with the first flight featuring the truly delicious 2017. While the ‘15 vintage was much more heralded (and featured alongside), the ‘17 lived up to its reputation as imminently drinkable.
The stars of the show were definitely in the final flight of Clos des Ducs, with one home run and one surprise showing. The 2009, a stellar vintage since day one, showed incredible power and precision, and was arguably the ‘best’ wine of the line up (as it should be!) But in a surprise to me, it was the 2013 that I found the most charming. The vintage has long been confusing to me aromatically, though I’ve always liked the acid structure. This bottle was astounding, layers upon layers of complexity, nuance and such an elegant and long palate that I was taken aback. As a fun side by side, a guest at the dinner bought a bottle of the same vintage from the restaurant’s wine list, and so we got to see a slightly more advanced example also, a lucky treat.
Lesson learned: wine, especially great, regal wines like these, are best drunk out of giant bottles…
