By: Ryan Tedder
If you ever talk favorite wines and drinking preference with me I always gravitate to some staple regions and wines that always resonate with me. At the top of my list is Chardonnay (White Burg, Champagne) without a doubt. I had a nice treat a few days back with a little trifecta of stellar Chardonnay from three of the best producers and vineyards in the world. Yippee Skippy! Great friends around the table and the wines were SINGING!
We started with a bottle of 2009 Aubert Ritchie Chardonnay. Bang for the buck-this is a top 3 chardonnay in America. The richness, the caramel, buttered popcorn, creamed corn, baked apple pie, bosch pear, and honey wafting from the glass and coming through thunderously on the palate. This is a sexy, unabashed rich Cali Chard that is thick in all the right places. If you like oak, extract, creamy ripe fruit and butter, you will fall in love with this wine! Good luck finding any…
Next we went onto the 2010 Domaine Leflaive Les Pucelles 1er Cru in Puligny Montrachet. This was a baby and a splash decant was necessary to coax some of the nobles flavors from the wine. After about 30 minutes the wine started to unfold. This plot of land is rarefied and illustrious to say the least. It is adjacent to a little Grand Cru called Batard Montrachet and the pedigree of these grapes merit praise. The ageability of the wine legendary. The level of dry extract in this great wine was stunning. It was like chewing on a bit of Chardonnay magic. Limestone, gravel, lemon, quince, yellow apples and pears, hawthorne & honeysuckle started to emerge. The wine was powerful, mineral infused precision with a ripe pear and citrus exterior with high purity and complexity. The fiish was long and energetic. A wine to stash for a few more years and watch develop. Pretty rocking now though too!!
Last we finished with a bottle of 2011 Meo Camuzet Corton Charlemagne Grand Cru. Meo Camuzet is without a doubt an aristocratic and noble house of Burgundy and their wines are beyond sought after and worthy of their stellar reputations. I have much more personal experience with the stellar line up of Meo Camuzet reds. This was my first encounter with their Grand Cru Corton Charlie bottling. When Corton Charlie is on-they are some of the best in Burgundy-hands down. I had a bottle of 1996 Leroy Corton Charlie that quite literally brought a tear to my eye. This 2011 from Meo did not cause me to weep, but daaaaaaammmmmmmnnnn it was good!!! This possesses a lavish amount of oak that frames the intense mineral character and the green apple, lemon, peach and apricot suffused aromas. There is impressive richness to the fleshy and opulent flavors that exude an attractively complex and persistent finish. This is a succulent example of the appellation and one that will drink well sooner than is typical for it. Very stunning and made me a real believer. Grab it if you can find it-worth it!! A killer 2011 White Burg.