We were delighted to kick-off ‘Burgundy Fortnight’ in London with one of the opening tastings for our 2014 Burgundy primeurs on Monday. There is clearly great interest in this latest vintage release and rightly so – there are many delicious wines at every price level. It was super to see so many esteemed members of the wine press, the London restaurant trade and our private customers making the trip to the fabulous 67 Pall Mall, thank you all for coming!
2014 Burgundy Tasting at 67 Pall Mall
67 Pall Mall worked brilliantly as a new venue for us. Having opened just before Christmas it was a treat to take advantage of this excellent new space, not to mention the professional nous of the team there. This is London’s first club for wine lovers, it is an impressive, Lutyens building at the St James’s end of the street, that was once Hambros bank. The club’s focus on wine is paramount to what they are trying to achieve here, amongst other important vino-centric decisions was the choice to only stock the gold-standard in glassware too – Zalto. Tasting our wines from the Zalto ‘Universal’ was great, we have long been fans of these beautiful Austrian glasses and have imported them ourselves for the last few years, but it is still quite rare to find them out and about, it was a great reminder how important a good glass is and how much it can add to the wine-drinking experience. The club’s decision to go with Zalto was unequivocal and they placed such a large order for 9,000 stems, that it effectively closed the factory to other orders for six weeks!
L&S 2014 Burgundy Tasting at 67 Pall Mall
We showed more than 130 wines and were delighted to have with us four of our friends from Burgundy to introduce their own 2014s, Julien Barraud from Domaine Barraud in the Mâconnais, Laurent Pillot from Chassagne, Nicolas Rossignol from Volnay and Thibault Liger-Belair from Nuits Saint Georges.
As is now general knowledge, 2014 is a really good vintage – it is the whites that are stealing the headlines with a great showing from Chablis in the north right down to Burgundy’s most southerly vineyards in the Mâconnais. It is their verve, brightness and gorgeously pure juice that makes these so appetising – some immediately! 2014 Reds are super too – but perhaps more variable and many are less classically ‘long-haul’ wines than in some vintages. At their best they have a wonderful light feel to the well-ripened fruit, a soft joy and that pure mineral drive, these are super and many will not require the patience of vintages like 2005 or 2009 to come round to drinking, but this early joy comes at no real expense to character or complexity.
As ever you can read more about the vintage, the wines and our producers – in Charles’ detailed 2014 Burgundy Report which you can read here, with producer profiles, wine availability and all pricing – not to mention all other critic’s notes, please do follow this link. Having tasted again through the super range I’d urge you to take a close look and don’t miss out on adding some of these beauties to your cellar, you won’t regret it (perhaps even for drinking from Zalto!).