La Paulée Des champs ~ Maison troisgros

June 6, 2024

Raj Vaidya

Our team is slowly getting back into the groove of ‘business as usual’ after a tremendous few days working alongside the team at Maison Troisgros outside of Roanne, France. We hosted three days of festivities during our second edition of La Paulée des Champs, a Burgundy extravaganza that spanned the course of two dinners and two lunches, including a La Paulée style BYO, and as I begin to come down from the high of the weekend I thought I should share some of the vinous highlights.

The first evening kicked off with a tasting of the 2022 vintage, a really stellar and delicious introduction to what will surely be an excellent range of wines for decades to come. We followed this up with a dinner focused on the 2017 vintage (a nice corollary to the ‘22’s, similar in many ways) at Le Central, the family’s casual bistro. The following day kicked off with a Delamotte lunch and several bits of fun entertainment, a classic French quartet, pétanque and lots of merry-making. Friday evening was the main dinner, featuring Cesar Troigros’ delicate and nuanced cuisine at its finest.

The six domaines in attendance (plus Champagnes Delamotte & Salon) put their very best foot forward with the wine selections. The absolute highlight for me were the flights of Roulot (Charmes 2011 and 2008 from magnum) and Roumier (Bonnes Mares and Amoureuses 2007 from magnum) but every wine showed incredibly well, and contributed beautifully to the ambience of a very fine evening.

Saturday was our La Paulée BYO lunch, and the attendees and vignerons (with many of the new generation) came strong, with some truly memorable bottles, some highlights of which are represented in photos below. Too much great wine!

A couple of fancy bottles shared on Friday evening.

A pristine bottle of ‘72 Clos des Chênes

Impromptu vertical tasting of Roumier Chambolle Villages

Another wonderful Lafarge, this time not direct from the domaine but in amazing shape!

It was truly a magical weekend. Thanks to all of you who joined us and can’t wait to do it again!

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