Les bouteilles inoubliables - article de Neal Martin

BY NEAL MARTIN | MARCH 5, 2019


I was darting in and out of domaines up and down the Côte d’Or last autumn. You know that by now. One thing you did not know is that before commencing each tasting, I asked every winemaker one question, insisting they need not reply until I was finished. Most of us require time to flick through our Rolodex of vinous memories, though some blurted out their answer as if it were spring-loaded inside. Some replies were brief and rudimentary, yet never perfunctory. Along the way, this clichéd question was a key that unlocked wonderful anecdotes, two or three of them quite poignant. Unsurprisingly, Burgundy featured heavily, accounting for 108 out of 156 answers; Lalou Bize-Leroy and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti were cited six and 16 times, respectively. It would seem that every citizen of Chambolle-Musigny sipped from the same magical 1945, and Saint-Aubin has a penchant for Clos Ste. Hune. Acknowledging their “rival,” Bordeaux was represented by 22 wines. (I wonder if it would be the same if I carried out the exercise there.) A common thread is age, proving that bottled history moves the soul. Some are zeniths in terms of quality, others by dint of occasion, company and symbolism. Answers are organized per appellation for you to peruse at leisure. I especially recommend those of David Rebourgeon, Amélie Berthaut, Cyrielle Rousseau, Thibault Liger-Belair, Mathilde Grivot, Marie-Christine Teuillaud, Christine Gruere, Emmanuel Rouget and Hugo Bize.

But what is the question?

“What is the most memorable bottle of wine that you have drunk in your lifetime?”

David Rebourgeon - Domaine Rebourgeon-Mure

If there was a single story that made this entire exercise worthwhile, it was David Rebourgeon’s.

“The best bottle… I don’t know if it’s the best bottle, but the most memorable was a 1938 Pommard Les Grands Epenots.”

I enquired about the vintage. Did I mishear? Surely he means 1937, a reputed Burgundy vintage. Nothing good came of 1938, did it?

“It was 1938 and it would have been bottled under the Domaine Rebourgeon Millotte. One day my father was pushing his wheelbarrow through the vineyard and it hit something. He found bottles of 1938 buried in the ground. My grandparents had buried them during the war. So we opened one of them to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.”