The traitor : 2015 Chantal Lescure Pommard 1er Les Bertins

[Nicklasss]

Enjoying Beaujolais lately, maybe upset some BWEers.

Won't be better tonight as I'm thirsty for Bourgogne.

Opened a 2015 Domaine Chantal Lescure Pommard 1er Cru Les Bertins. Medium red color, with an intriguing nose of concentrated cherries, flowers, pink peppecorns, light cinnamon, light minerals and more red berries. In mouth, offers all light spices of that area, and all the little red fruits that the Pinot Noir can show, with lot of abundant light slightly harsh tannins. Complex, aerial, fresh, but still very long on spices and cherries. Very solid and offer that nice vine wood flavors from Côtes de Beaune wines. Long finish. Will be even better in 7 years, as very young (but delicious) at the moment. Tn: 92.

Seems to me that Bourgogne is improving, but not with too much micro-oxygenation, super over ripe Pinot Noir, or looking for the right consultant that can made THE Bourgogne that all critics are looking for. Individuality still rule, and terroir, and vintage influence. Do you think more and more wine lovers want Bourgogne? Do you want a more and more unifomat taste (ripe grape, Consultant approved wines) that is polluting Bordeaux or a unique encounter (that can be bad, ordinary, excellent or great) like in Bourgogne?

Nic

[Nicklasss]

Highly perfumed wine. Very tasty. And this 1er Cru Pommard, produced on a less than 7 hectares Les Bertins 1er Cru, for the price of a Chateau Lagrange.

Nic

[Dandersson]

Hey Nic,
Beaujolais, is one thing, not my cup of tea. Anyway this is burgundy so in my book not the same. Seems like you really enjoyed this one.
When you say priced like a Lagrange, are we talking $45 or $80? See prices are shifting crazy from where I get things.
It is a region I should try more, but have been unimpressed by QPR which sadly is a big deal for me. Thank you!

Best, Dan

[Claret]

...

[Dandersson]

Claret
I could be wrong but Gamay is not generally the grape of Pommard, I could be wrong but would guess Pinot noir?

Best, Dan

[Claret]

My bad, I was stuck on Beaujolais. Wrong thread.

[Racer Chris]

Hey NIc,
If it helps, I'll tell you Pinot Noir is no good too.
Especially French Pinot, which is overpriced just like Napa Valley wines are.
OTOH, I've never tasted Cru Bojo.

[Nicklasss]

Hey NIc,
If it helps, I'll tell you Pinot Noir is no good too.
Especially French Pinot, which is overpriced just like Napa Valley wines are.
OTOH, I've never tasted Cru Bojo.

Racer, i know, but someone has to consumme the no good stuff too. I do.

Dandersson, that Pommard is around same price of latest Lagrange vintage, being more around 80 $cad here. The Pommard is a few dollars more, but it is been a long time that i had a young Lagrange as good and complex as that Pommard...

Nic

[Nicklasss]

I tell you, at the opposite of marcs 2015 Chevillon Les Cailles, the 2015 Lescure Pommard continued to evolve positively during the night, addind black fruits, and light violets flower flavors in mouth.

Extremely nice Pommard and will have a bright future normally.

Nic

[stefan]

WineSearcherPro says only one store in the USA has this Pommard. $95.

Too bad, as it sounds really nice. Not at all like that f*%$#@! Bojo you have been choking down.

[Claudius2]

Nic
I have a few cases of 2010 Chantal Lescure NSG's (Damodes and Vallerots). Auction buys that were shipped from Amsterdam.
Have tired Volnays and Pommards from this producer which were both very nice.

In terms of improving, I agree that there are now lots of very good producers in Burgundy and the old jokes about Burgundy (e.g., you need to drink 10 to find one good one) no longer apply.
However, I don't want anyone else buying them as otherwise I'll be forced to pay more for them.

Having said that, the Chinese and other Asian markets were (before COVID-19 that is) developing considerable interest in Burgundy.
In the last 5 yrs or so, I've seen a lot more interest in Burgundy over here.
Worse luck, I used to be able to buy them at clearance sales for reasonable prices, now even the auction prices are getting silly.
I found this article on Forbes which discusses the new-found Asian love affair with Burgundy:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanniecho ... 09c5cf1cab
I also have a feeling that I was one of the small group of Burg lovers who are now being crowded out of the market by the nouveau riche.

Bordeaux however is going to have a harder time of it in China.
As I have pointed out a few times, there are several factors driving down Bordeaux sales (I mean pre-virus) such as:

1. Crackdowns on gift giving and expense accounts by the authorities including austerity measures which have been forced on Provincial govts and affect the private sector as well.
2. Concerns about fake wines (which incidentally are associated here more with Bdx here such as Petrus and Mouton)
3. A lack of proper storage in Asia - this is a bigger issue than it appears as Bdx generally needs longer cellaring than Burgundy or other wines, and the market has also learned that you should NOT drink Latour the day it arrives.....
4. Far too much speculative buying - too many traders, investors and fast buck (or RMB) merchants have bought top Bdx and this is starting to be an issue as the wines mature (and often in poor conditions) and the wines need to be sold
5. Associated with the above, some failed wine investment schemes
6. More sales activity from everywhere in the on-licence trade. The top restaurants, bars, clubs etc are heavily targeted by every region from Chile to Canada and Australia to Argentina.
7. While Chinese economic growth is (or was pre-virus) still strong, there is a broad view that the good times of rapid growth and opportunity are stalling.
8. The typical Chinese and Asian desire for the next big thing. Again, this cannot be ignored as the nouveau riche are looking for what is new, not what is known. Restaurants face the same problem in Asia.
9. Over-supplied real estate markets meaning that speculators can't cash in, and there is one hell of a lot of unsold stock in China.
10. As above, the stock market isn't the gravy train it was up to 2015. It crashed big time and despite volatility since then, it has not fully recovered - and the Covid-19 virus will exacerbate it.

[Nicklasss]

Very interesting points Claudius.

My vins de Bourgogne inventory is low, so i freak out a bit as i like Bourgogne. The prices increased but for what they are and their production being little, i guess a very good/excellent Bourgogne at 100 $ will mostly always woth it price compate to a Bordeaux. And i will be a bit more because i guess the prices for Bourgogne will never go down.

Your item 2 is intetesting. Is it easier to make and sale a fake Bordeaux, vs Bourgogne? With taste trends of the moment, i'm thinking naturally it is tougher to fake Bourgogne.

Nic

[Claudius2]

Nic
There are really only a handful of wines that have been commonly faked - GC Bourgogne such as DRC, and the top Bdx particularly Petrus though also the left bank first growths.
Though in some areas of China, fake Penfolds wines (Grange and Bin 707 Cab Sav) have shown up.
Some samples were in fact tested by Penfolds in Australia and found out to be cheaper Penfolds wines - that is, $20 wines were being sold as Grange and/or 707. At least they were Penfolds.....

Due to growing popularity over the last few decades, top Bordeaux has been faked a lot more, partly as the wines have (until now) been better known and sought after.
You can check out this Forbes article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamelaambl ... 622b465843

One factor is that retailers started to notice errors in labels, capsules etc, and secondly, they were being offered large volumes of rare wines that raised a few flags.
I have travelled in China several times, I can assure you that I have seen obviously fake Bordeaux on sale - I actually DO know how to spell Lafite even if some Chinese con men do not.

Over the last decade or so, the Chinese media has picked up on a few stories about fake wines and they have spooked the market, and some retailers and on-licence sellers reached a point where they had to guarantee authenticity to move the wine off their floors. I am friends with a wholesaler in SIngapore who also sells in HK and Guangzhou and he has told me a few anecdotes about the extent of fake wine. When distributors offer to sell more than the annual production, you know there is an issue.

Putting wine aside, China and India fake everything, and I mean everything. It is not just handbags and watches (there are billions of them already) you can buy anything from fake currencies, gold bullion or even junk food.
A large proportion of medicines sold in Asia (and presumably other regions) are fake. Seriously, they would sell fake water if they knew how.
A lot of foods (milk products, eggs, shellfish, beef, chicken, whatever) are completely fake.
You know there is a big issue when children routinely die from fake milk power or adults are sick from fake eggs.

Now I am not singling out China as the situation in numerous Asian countries is exactly the same, it is just that China's love affair with Bordeaux was noticed by the usual suspects - scammers, gangs, etc.

cheers
Mark

[DavidG]

How do they produce fake eggs for less than the real thing?

[Nicklasss]

David, I think we don't really want to know that...

Last year, when i was in China (January 2019), i can tell you I had cheese one or two time and it was really awful. Probably fake cheese.

Nic

[Claudius2]

Nic & David,
The following is a process for fake eggs:

"Fake egg's shell is made of calcium carbonate. Egg yolk and egg white are made of sodium alginate, alum, gelatin , eatable calcium chloride and then add water and food coloring. First pour a set amount of sodium alginate into warm water and mix it into egg white like shape, then mix it with gelatin together with benzoic acid , alum and other chemicals to make the egg white. Egg yolk is just adding lemon yellow food coloring."

Wendy (who is Chinese but has lived here in Singapore for 25 years) says that this faking of eggs has gone on for a long time.
It is often impossible to tell the difference until you crack them open (there is no internal membrane around the white part that lines the shell) but they are apparently very common.
They are known to be half the cost of real eggs, and simply as labour is cheap in many areas of China, and secondly, the base ingredients such as gelatin and sodium alginate are cheap and are used in huge volumes.
If you check YouTube, you can see them being made - and made very quickly.

Now, can you imagine anyone faking lettuce and cabbage?????
And nuts where the nut is removed from the shell and replaced by cement? Sheesh.
You better believe it.....
I always lose weight when I travel to China as I either get stomach bugs or just prefer to avoid the food unless I am starving.

David,
One point about cheese in China. Unless you are sure that it is safe, avoid it.
Fake cheese can either be made from milk or milk byproducts, from soy or other grain, or from synthetic fillers and coagulants.
Now processed cheese like Kraft is to my palate awful and better described as plastic than real food. But it is unlikely to kill you.
However, there are likely to be really toxic ingredients such as cyanide compounds.
The same happened with fake milk power - 53,000 babies and young kids were hospitalised and many died several years ago.
The fake cheese market also got a window of opportunity when the Chinese govt banned the importation of some cheeses from Europe (supposedly due to hygiene) in 2017.

Even if you buy food at western style restaurants or shops like WalMart or Carrefour, you cannot be sure that they were not duped into buying fake food, or that someone has been bribed or is profiteering.
I think I will give lunch a miss......

[Nicklasss]

Thanks Claudius.

I worked a year and a half with a chinese origins woman, that was still holding to all the chinese believing (specific numbers more important than others, colors...) and one day, talking about what the chinese eat as meat, she told me that chinese eat everything that have their back facing the sun. That literally mean everything except human!

I'm a good candidate for chinese food, as my system can digest anything without problems.

But, at the end, i'll try to stick to good french real Pommard.

Nic

[Claudius2]

Nic
I really wish I could do the same.
I have has internal surgery a few times and have various internal problems.
If anyone in the room gets sick it will be me so I am very careful.
I am particularly susceptible to food additives and for that reason, I avoid a lot of Chinese or other Asian sauces.

[DavidG]

Mark, thank you for that fascinating discourse on fake foods, the eggs in particular. I was aware of the Chinese bent for faking things and of the deaths from milk powder and other foods contaminated with melamine. But the egg story just seemed incredible to me before your explanation. Even making me feel a bit queasy about the real eggs in our fridge right now.

[Blanquito]

I’ve seen whole wine stores of obviously fake wine and fake booze in East Asia again and again. I mean obviously faked, with poorly photocopied labels, etc. Even in the duty free areas at international airports in Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, and Hanoi.

Not just the expensive stuff either, lots of low end wines weren’t real either.

[sdr]

I’ve seen whole wine stores of obviously fake wine and fake booze in East Asia again and again. I mean obviously faked, with poorly photocopied labels, etc. Even in the duty free areas at international airports in Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, and Hanoi.

Not just the expensive stuff either, lots of low end wines weren’t real either.

If it’s obviously faked, who is buying it?

Anyone with a modicum of wine knowledge would give it a pass, so it has to be people who have minimal familiarity with the labels. If they are buying it to impress others they are betting all the guests are ignorant as well.

At the low end, why bother?

Do these buyers actually believe they are getting the real thing at half price? Do they enjoy the wine anyway?

Is this a cultural thing in this part of the world? Of course, more sophisticated fakes ala Rodenstock or Rudy are a different category entirely. But no one enjoys being duped.

Stu

[marcs]

I always felt safe from counterfeiting because I don't really play in the DRC/Rousseau/First Growth space. But with so many good classed growths now costing between $100-200 a bottle, I am concerned that counterfeits could easily be moving down into the areas of wine that we buy. You could make a lot of money with a small factory that mass-produced fake Leoville Barton or Pichon Baron or Lynch Bages or what have you. Production levels on those wines are such that if you focused on a couple of recent vintages you could probably slip them into the global commerce stream without that much notice. They could easily reach the U.S. through grey market or auction channels. How much do we really know about what's in our collections?

[Blanquito]

I’ve seen whole wine stores of obviously fake wine and fake booze in East Asia again and again. I mean obviously faked, with poorly photocopied labels, etc. Even in the duty free areas at international airports in Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, and Hanoi.

Not just the expensive stuff either, lots of low end wines weren’t real either.

If it’s obviously faked, who is buying it?

Anyone with a modicum of wine knowledge would give it a pass, so it has to be people who have minimal familiarity with the labels. If they are buying it to impress others they are betting all the guests are ignorant as well.

At the low end, why bother?

Do these buyers actually believe they are getting the real thing at half price? Do they enjoy the wine anyway?

Is this a cultural thing in this part of the world? Of course, more sophisticated fakes ala Rodenstock or Rudy are a different category entirely. But no one enjoys being duped.

Stu

Great questions Stu and I really personally have no idea to the answers. From what I could tell though, NO ONE was buying these wines. They were dusty. And despite the usually obviously forgeries, the prices were quite bad. Maybe the sellers were rubes in the process?

Passing through Seoul in my way to Vietnam, I bought a bottle of 12 year old scotch (from a distillery I know) for the many toasting and gatherings that I knew would ensue, and it was a “good” fake in that it wasn’t obviously a forgery on the shelf. But when we opened it, it was filled with some undrinkably horrible liquid. I passed through Seoul another 4 times and never bought anything again.

[Claudius2]

Guys
We really do live in a world of fakes and counterfeits.
In Singapore many retailers sell fakes of the exact same goods but at various price points.
So you can have the really cheap Louis Vuitton bag, the medium priced one or the more expensive one.
That in itself sounds crazy but not all pigs are equal I suppose.