2007 Domaine Denis Bachelet, Côte de Nuits-Villages Rouge, Red Burgundy, France.
This wine was a huge and pleasing surprise, on a night with many pedigreed bottles open, it shined and took on all comers, it was absolutely stunning with much more depth and complexity than you’d expect from the more lowly Côte de Nuits-Villages labelling here, as well as the vintage which was not as highly regarded for longevity or dimension. This dark ruby/garnet hued wine performed like a top Premier Cru level wine and was gorgeous in every detail from aromatics, textural silkiness, to length with elegantly fresh array of black cherry, strawberry, red currant and fig fruits, as well as crushed rose petals, a hint of bacon fat, mineral, a light sense of wood and baking spice. The Bachelet wines are a tough get, so thank to my friend Alex Lallos of No Limits Fine Wines, for sharing this nicely aged beauty with us, it was the definite star of the evening and not a bottling that I’d had before. The grapes for the Côte de Nuits-Villages are hand tended and gently crushed with 100% de-stemmed berries and kept cool during maceration and fermentation to preserve aromatics and the wine finishes primary and settling in stainless steel before going to barrel. Denis Bachelet employs a judicious oak regiment, typically utilizing only about 25% new oak for village-level wines, and exclusively Vosges oak for this village wine and his Premier Cru wines.
Most people will know that Domaine Denis Bachelet is a well-regarded, small estate, based in Gevrey-Chambertin, in Burgundy’s northern Côte de Nuits subregion, with several highly prized vineyards in the area, and that the wines are exceptionally hard to get. Interestingly, Denis Bachelet was born in Belgium in 1963, the same year I was born, and would visit his grandparents in Gevrey (Chambertin) during his school holidays and became captivated by, what he says, the allure of the vine and eventually took over the family estate there in 1981 and has know become one of the region’s top producers. His son Nicholas now is playing a big role here at Domaine Bachelet and looks to continue the family’s legacy with his own wines, and I look forward to seeing how the wines evolve under his guidance. There are some incredible plots of vine in the holdings, many very old vine parcels, as seen with this Côte-de-Nuits villages with vines that mostly date back to 1952, but also includes some in the lieux-dit Créole in Brochon, which was planted in the early 1900’s. So that helps explain why this 2007 was an absolutely stunning wine! It’s pretty rare to find 100 year old plus vines in Burgundy these days and this level of concentration and deep flavors make for something truly special as seen here in this example, in fact this wine maybe out did some Grand Cru wines from the same vintage, in my own experiences.
($85-100 Est.) 94 Points, grapelive