VITIS AMSTERDAMENSIS
Beautiful Burgundy
10 October 2008
This evening our guest speaker was Marijn Smit from Vyne Wine bar (www.vyne.nl) who is well known to a number of our members (I wonder why….?).
Marijn presented us with three white and three red wines from the beautiful Burgundy region of central east France, which more or less straddles the line of the River Rhone. Bourgogne is a very patchy region, with distinct regions where the red wines are generally produced from the Pinot Noir grape and the whites from the Chardonnay grape. The region is rich in its diversity of wines, and this stems from the different terroirs to be found here. Indeed, Burgundy is in some ways the most terroir-oriented region in France; immense attention is paid to the area of origin, and in which of the region's 400 types of soil a wine's grapes are grown.
To set us off for the evening, we were introduced to a St Aubin 1er cru "en Remilly" van Colin, 2006 a very tasty white wine, which was appreciated by most and which scored a total of 2.46 on our vinometer. This opening was followed up with a Rully 1er cru "Meix-Cadot" van Dureuil-Janthial, 2005, and which scored no less than 2.83. Our third white wine, a Meursault "Narvaux" van Karel de Graaf, 2004 was exceptionally good and this was reflected in the higher vinometer score of 3.04!
Turning to our trio of red wines, our first such wine was Santenay 1er cru "la Comme" van Girardin 2005 and this managed to score a credible 2.38 on our score sheet. This was then followed up with a Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er cru "les Fourneaux" van Bize, 2004 and a corresponding score of 3.29.
Marijn clearly believes in keeping the best ‘til last, and here he introduced us to a wonderful Gevrey-Chambertin V.V. van Geantet-Pansiot, which produced a vinometer score of no less than 4.29, which is one of the highest for any wine that the club has tasted! This was a truly magnificent wine and thoroughly appreciated by us all!
The club is extremely thankful to Marijn for presenting us with six very good wines, and also for imparting so much information and knowledge about them. Marijn sourced all of the wines of the evening from the fantastic wine shop B.J. De Logie in Amsterdam (http://www.delogie.nl/) Once again, we are indebted to our excellent host Oscar, ably assisted this week by MJ, and we look forward to returning for our next tasting on 14 November.
Having started this year’s tastings with A for Austria, then B for Burgundy, surely the next cannot be C for……… Canada????