A hasty investigation into very pricey burgundies

The Hong Kong-Burgundy axis is an interesting one. There are probably more people who live in, or have recently moved from, Hong Kong who are willing and able to drink top-quality burgundy than anywhere else in the world. Today’s almost unbelievably high prices don’t seem to deter them.

Recent Hong Kong investment in Burgundy vineyards and domaines has been discreet but considerable. One evening earlier this month, I had an aperitif in Beaune, the capital of Burgundy’s famous Côte d’Or. On the short cobbled street where I found myself, no fewer than three Hong Kongers own a house.

The following day, thanks to the extreme generosity of Hong Kong-based investment banker Richard Orders, I had the pleasure of tasting 32 mature or maturing burgundies from the most revered domaines on the Côte d’Or. The tasting was instigated by Nigel Bruce, a teacher who recently retired to Wales after 30 years as a member of the Hong Kong Wine Society.

Bruce wrote to me last October, worried about the state of the 2011 burgundy vintage. He had heard reports that some of the reds had developed a certain herbaceousness in bottle — smelling too much of crushed green leaves rather than ripe fruit — so he proposed a tasting of as many as possible. In the end only six came from his wine collection, while Orders supplied the other 26, including six very smart 2011 white burgundies, from his extensive stocks held in bond in England.

The location of the tasting was poignant. It took place on a hot day in the high-ceilinged, airy hall of the home of Becky Wasserman, the famous wine broker who died last summer at 84. She lived in the hamlet of Bouilland, at the head of a verdant valley in the hills west of Beaune. From this bucolic base she played a key role in developing the huge US market for fine burgundy and launched the careers of countless burgundy experts. She is much missed for her adherence to true quality rather than big names.

With that in mind, she might have been somewhat bemused by the roll call of grand producers represented around her long table: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (run until very recently by her great friend Aubert de Villaine), Rousseau, Roumier, Leroy, Coche-Dury, d’Angerville, de Vogüé, Dujac, Lafon (Dominique Lafon was one of her business’s legion of now-famous interns), Lambrays, Leflaive, Roulot and more of that ilk.

Two out of 32 is a disappointing failure rate in wines that today would cost hundreds, in some cases thousands, of pounds a bottle

As it was, her spirit was certainly there. Her husband Russell Hone sat in the dining room next door directing operations for the lunch that followed the tasting. Neighbour Jasper Morris, a Master of Wine and author of both editions of the excellent Inside Burgundy, had set up the bottles. His initial sniffs revealed that the de Vogüé Musigny 2011 was fatally flawed by cork taint and Anne Gros’s Richebourg mildly so. Two out of 32 is a disappointing failure rate in wines that, at current market values, would cost hundreds, in some cases thousands, of pounds a bottle.

Of the 32 wines, no fewer than 24 were Grands Crus, grown in hallowed plots of vines deemed capable over time of producing the Côte d’Or’s finest bottles. Only one wine was of supposedly basic “village” level (without a specific vineyard named on the label): Coche-Dury’s straight Meursault, which kept its end up beside five white burgundies carrying much grander names, including Joseph Drouhin’s Grand Cru Montrachet.

The thick stone walls and flagged floor kept both tasters and the wines suitably cool. The former included Burgundy specialists such as Master of Wine Anthony Hanson, Allen Meadows (aka wine writer Burghound) and Linden Wilkie of The Fine Wine Experience who has recently moved from Hong Kong to that back street in Beaune.

About 20 tasters in all, including Orders and Bruce, of course, and various friends of theirs, moved slowly round the table making notes. Because there was just one bottle of each wine, Morris (who broadcast cricket scores throughout the tasting) had reminded us at the beginning of one of Wasserman’s sayings, “If you have wine to pour away after tasting it, you’ve poured too much”. We took this to heart to such an extent that the bottles were still almost half-full once we had all tasted, though they were empty by the time we had finished our lunch in the shade of a tree in the garden, overlooked by the cliffs that the famous Lalou Bize-Leroy of Domaine Leroy used to climb with her late husband Marcel.

The 2011 harvest was one of the earliest ever in Burgundy, with some grapes picked in August, September and October having previously been the norm. The first grapes at the renowned Domaine Leflaive in Puligny-Montrachet, for instance, were picked on August 25. It was an unusual year marked by an exceptionally hot April that sped up the ripening process and fine, dry weather during the flowering in May that held out the promise of a decent-sized crop of healthy grapes. But heavy rains plagued July and August. Some grapes swelled so much that they threatened to burst and invite rot. Only low midsummer temperatures staved off serious disease, and uneven ripening meant that grapes had to be carefully sorted.

Although the grapes were technically ripe enough, with vine leaves starting to turn yellow as early as the first few days of September, potential alcohol levels were low and many producers added a little sugar to the fermentation vat to increase the final potency of the wine, so-called chaptalisation. Most of the wines we tasted were labelled either 13 or 13.5 per cent alcohol. Only Domaine Fourrier’s distinctively muscular Grand Cru Griotte-Chambertin Vieille Vigne notched up 14 per cent.

So did we find this mysterious greenness in the wines? Absolutely not. Perhaps just a little bit on the finish of La Tâche, but that was one of the most youthful wines of the tasting and it has a very long life ahead of it. Most of these wines are already an enormous pleasure to drink, even if one should feel in no hurry to pull corks.

Despite their maturity, the 2011s are “cheaper” than any red burgundy vintage up to and including 2019 — with the sole exception of 2012 village reds — according to trade analysis by Liv-ex. I wonder whether this is justified. I found myself scoring the top wines 19 and 19.5, which is very rare for me.

Both the reds and the whites were successful. Of the reds, the stars were, as usual, the Côte de Nuits Grands Crus. But then they tend to be the most expensive burgundies of all. In general, there are many relative bargains to be had on the Côte de Beaune, but they are probably of more interest to those on a British rather than a Hong Kong budget.

Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. More stockists from Wine-searcher.com

Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson

Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first