Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

Last night we dined at Le Gaigne, an excellent restaurant in the eighth arrondissement, recently relocated from the fourth. With the first course of mushrooms we popped and poured two Volnay wines, 2003 Nicolas Potel Les Gaudichots and 1995 D’Angerville Taillepied. The D’Angerville was a brooding Burg at first while the inviting floral bouquet of the Potel immediately enticed us. It has wonderful sweet fruit. It is a lovely and easy wine. The D’Angerville has great structure and the nose expanded with oxygenation. It is still rather young. Unfortunately, I will not be able to revisit it because this was my last bottle. Tim and I preferred the Potel while Lucie leaned toward the D’Angerville.

Tim recounted a nice story about the history of Les Gaudichots. You can get the drift of it by reading a short Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Tâche_AOC

I am, however, confused about the Potel. I thought the label said Les GaudichEts, but probably I just miswrote GaudichOts. However, I am pretty sure that the Potel was a Volnay, and sources, including the Wikipedia article, say that Les Gaudichots carries the Vosne-Romanée appellation. I hope that Tim can reduce my confusion.

With our main courses, pigeon for me and hare for Lucie and Tim, we drank two 1978 Bordeaux from Tim’s cellar, Canon-La-Gaffeliere and Lynch-Bages. The St Emilion has a very expressive nose and sticky fruit. About the Lynch Tim said, “like smiling a bag of coffee beans,” and, later, “love the nose; cloves and … “. In some respects the Lynch is a simple wine, but its class shows in its length. 1978 is one of my favorite vintages because of the fragrance that so many Bordeaux from this vintage have, as both of these do.

We continued with a decanted 1996 Leoville-Poyferre. For a long time L-P was considered a poor sister to the other Leovilles, it has become more popular in this millennium. Tim summed it up, “beautiful”. It was unfortunate that we had nearly finished our main courses and had no room for cheese.

Both Friday and Saturday evenings were great for Lucie and me and very different. It was good to spend one night just with Tim and we look forward to seeing him again in May.

Another wonderful evening and thanks for sharing. It never ceases to amaze me the shear volumes of wine you travel with let alone the quality. Hats off to a couple of travelling epicureans that do it up right. How long a liver holiday will you now take to let the liver recover after this week?? Safe travels.

Yet another very nice evening with Stefan and Lucie!

The Potel was a Gaudichots, Vosne-Romanee. There are a few interesting things about this wine. First, as Stefan pointed out, it is connected to the La Tache vineyard, and in fact most of La Tache used to be Gaudichots. However, not all the Gaudichots vineyard was Grand Cru, and as DRC bought the rest of the La Tache parts of the vineyard to create a Monopole, they were able to blend from the different parts of the vineyard in order to create the complexity of La Tache today. The Potel Gaudichots was only produced until 2007, whereupon Forey purchased that part of the vineyard to add to his existing Gaudichots property. Now those grapes go into the Forey Gaudichots, and he has increased his production of the wine.

Here is a nice summary of the history of Les Gaudichots:
http://winehog.org/vosne-romanee-les-gaudichots-16919/

Volnay is my epiphany wine, so it was great to see the two up against each other. In my opinion, the Volnay has greater aging potential, and it developed very nicely over the course of an hour or so. But I had to give preference to the Gaudichots, perhaps it was the terroir, who knows!

The night flew by, we arrived at the restaurant at 8pm and left at almost midnight. It was really a fun night, and I highly recommend Le Gaigne for those that visit Paris!

stefan wrote:1978 is one of my favorite vintages because of the fragrance that so many Bordeaux from this vintage have, as both of these do.

I agree, Stefan. 1978 along with 1979 and 1981 are my favorite Bordeaux vintages mainly because of the fragrant nose. I'm always amazed when I bring one of those to a wine tasting and others prefer extracted alcoholic sweet modern cabernets.

I love d"Angerville, too bad the Taillepied was a bit off. Fascinating story, Tim, about the Potel Gaudichets. I guess trying the Forey would be the closest thing I could get to La Tache considering the price of the latter.

Great adventure to add to a bunch of other great adventures from what sounds like a fantastic trip. Stefan and Lucie, you guys are an inspiration! Jill and I want to be just like you one day.

Again, a very nice dinner that make us all jalous! Very nice wines, enjoyed with a nice meal, by very nice persons.

I would like to have access, to some nice Bordeaux from The good vintages of The late 70's more easily.

When I read those dinners review between BWEers, i just feel i don't do it often enough, even If i did lot of conventions and off-ligne évents... Enjoyable people, that know/like wines, without any snobbery, is hard to find.

Nic

Danny, Lucie and I are holding today's consumption down. We had an excellent lunch at Le Reminet near the Quai and drank only a bottle of Champagne. Tonight we'll finish off the '95 Gazin in our room with cheese while I watch the Cowboys play; I think there is almost half a bottle left. Tomorrow we luckily got rebooked by United, the worst airline in the world, onto an Air France flight that is direct to Houston. We are in Business Class, which on UA means barely drinkable wines, but I have heard that AF still serves pretty good wines in Business. We'll see.

I have too few days left to abstain completely when there are good wines to be drunk.

Thanks, Tim, clearing up the confusion. We were talking about Volnay and I probably just assumed that the Potel was a Volnay.

Jacques, I don't think that the D'Angerville was off in any way. BTW, being like us is just a matter of living long enough.

I love those old pre-1983 Lynches with their tobacco, coffee, and leather.
I have a 3L of 1996 Leoville Poyferre, where is this wine in its development?
So corkage is pretty unlimited in Paris I take it?

On the contrary, Jim. Very few places allow corkage.

Corkage is pretty much forbidden in Paris. The culture just hasn't adjusted to this yet. It takes a personal relationship with the owner/chef in order to get corkage allowed, and even then it is sometimes difficult. Friday night wasn't originally going to be a BYOB, but since Bastien knows the owner and sommelier, he arranged it. And I've been a good patron to Le Gaigne and asked the owner directly when they reopened if I could arrange a BYOB dinner as a special thing. They were very kind and had all the glasses and decanter set up for us. And they had an unusually busy night because they had a big party.

If we get France 2015 off the ground, I am going to propose that we do a dinner at Le Gaigne as part of our events, and have them prepare a menu for us.