Introduction
How did the French region of Burgundy come to the world’s attention as a wine region in the first place? What’s the golden rule for buying Burgundy, especially Pinot Noir? What’s behind the sometimes eye-watering stratospheric prices of Burgundian wines?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with one of Ireland’s leading wine writers, Raymond Blake.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
Giveaway
One of you is going to win a copy of On Burgundy: From Maddening to Marvellous in 59 Wine Tales, to which Raymond Blake contributed three essays.
Two of you will win a copy of Raymond Blake’s book, Wine Talk – An Enthusiast’s Take on the People, the Places, the Grapes, and the Styles.
How to Win
To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.
It takes less than 30 seconds: On your phone, scroll to the bottom here, where the reviews are, and click on “Tap to Rate.”
After that, scroll down a tiny bit more and click on “Write a Review.” That’s it!
I’ll choose one person randomly from those who contact me.
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I’ll be jumping into the comments as we watch it together so that I can answer your questions in real-time.
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Highlights
- What will you experience as you go through Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune in Burgundy?
- How did Burgundy come to the world’s attention as a wine region in the first place?
- How did the Napoleonic code and inheritance laws in Burgundy complicate the region even further?
- What’s behind the sometimes eye-watering pricing of Burgundy wines?
- Are there affordable options when it comes to Burgundy wines?
- What are some of the characteristics of Burgundy wines produced through the challenges that came with the 2021 vintage?
- What tasting notes will you experience from Jean-Marc Vincent Bourgogne Blanc 2021 and Jean-Claude Ramonet Bourgogne Pinot Noir 2021?
- What are some of Raymond’s more unconventional wine-drinking habits that often raise an eyebrow?
- Why shouldn’t you serve your red wines at room temperature?
- Which are Raymond’s two favourite versatile wines for food pairing?
- Which Burgundy wines could you pair with sweetbreads?
- What are some of Raymond’s favourite wine gadgets from the past and the present?
- Why would Raymond want to share a bottle of Chambertin with Napoleon Bonaparte?
Key Takeaways
- How did the French region of Burgundy come to the world’s attention as a wine region in the first place? One, the influence of Benedictine and Cistercian monks in developing the winemaking techniques and categorizing the vineyards in Burgundy; Two, geography as a trade route; Three, high quality of the wine. “The word got out about us and the word is still there”
- What’s the golden rule for buying Burgundy, especially Pinot Noir? Start with the producer who made the wine. It’s like buying property where location is the only thing that matters.
- What’s behind the sometimes eye-watering stratospheric prices of Burgundian wines? Fashion/market trends and the rise (and fall) of secondary markets.
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About Raymond Blake
Raymond Blake is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and in a previous career, worked as a schoolmaster in Clongowes Wood College (where James Joyce started his schooldays). He is one of Ireland’s leading wine writers and has been writing about wine and related topics for over 25 years. In that time, his travels have taken him to many far-flung corners of the wine world: Australia, South Africa, Bordeaux, Veneto, the Loire Valley, Rioja, California, Alsace, Burgundy, Champagne, Chile, Germany.
He is the Burgundy contributor for Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book, the world’s bestselling wine guide and is also a regular contributor to the highly regarded The World of Fine Wine magazine. In addition, Raymond Blake has written for numerous other publications in Ireland and abroad, such as Sommelier India, principally on wine but also on a diverse range of topics such as food, travel, classical music, education, history and culture. Most recently, he contributed three articles to On Burgundy: From Maddening to Marvellous in 59 Wine Tales, the latest publication from the Académie du Vin Library, founded by the late Steven Spurrier. He is also currently working on a second edition of his Côte d’Or book.
Raymond Blake and his wife, violinist Fionnuala Hunt, own a house in Burgundy, where he regularly leads tours of the region. He is also much in demand as a presenter at themed wine dinners and has established a reputation as an entertaining and informative speaker. In response to the challenges of COVID-19, Raymond presented numerous online wine tastings, principally for the noted London wine club, 67 Pall Mall. His Life in Burgundy webinar for ‘67’ was watched by viewers in Ireland and Britain, Europe, North and South America, New Zealand and South Africa. He has also presented multiple online events for businesses as a means of staff or client entertainment, a role that he also fulfills for private clients.
Resources
- Connect with Raymond Blake
- Zalto Universal Glass
- DropStop Wine Pourer
- Domaine du Rocher
- Wines We Tasted
- Diary of a Book Launch: An Insider Peek from Idea to Publication
- Wine Witch on Fire Free Companion Guide for Book Clubs
- My Books:
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 116: Open That Bottle Night with Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
Tag Me on Social
Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:
- @nataliemaclean and @natdecants on Facebook
- @nataliemaclean on Twitter
- @nataliemacleanwine on Instagram
- @nataliemaclean on LinkedIn
- Email Me at [email protected]
Thirsty for more?
- Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Raymond Blake (00:00:00) – I always say the golden rule when buying Burgundy is the producer who made the wine. It’s like buying property location. That’s the only thing the matter. Only when you know that should you look further at the vintage. You can then look and say, what about this? Is the 2021 vintage? Most people will have heard catastrophic reports about it. It’s always more nuanced than the headline suggests. While many producers suffered 80% losses, the wines that were made are pretty damn good. My descriptive term for the style of the wines is that what I call a lighter weave, and in some ways they’re more transparent. And people would say that maybe you’ve got a better expression of the terroir rather than the vintage coming through here.
Natalie MacLean (00:00:54) – Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject.
I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.
Welcome to episode 274. How did the French region of Burgundy come to the world’s attention as a wine region in the first place? What’s the golden rule for buying Burgundy, especially Pinot noir? And what’s behind the sometimes eye-watering stratospheric prices of Burgundian wines? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in Part Two of our chat with Raymond Blake, one of Ireland’s leading wine writers. You don’t need to have listened to Part One first from last week, but I hope you’ll go back to it if you missed it after you listen to this one. As I mentioned last week, if you’re in my Wine Smart online course, we take an even deeper dive into Burgundy and Pinot Noir in module four.
On a personal note, have you been saving a special bottle for a special occasion? Why wait? Life is short. I love the concept of Open That Bottle Bight created by former Wall Street Journal columnists Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher. As they mentioned during our interview in episode 116 of this podcast “the most common question we got was, I have this bottle of wine, I got it in an auction, or my father left it to me, or it’s from our wedding and I’ve had it forever. When should I open it? And then they kind of whisper. And how much is it worth? Every time we’d write back and say something like that. Wine is priceless. You should drink it. Make it a special meal this weekend. Drink it and celebrate your mother. Celebrate your long ago wedding. Celebrate whatever is in that bottle. We got this type of letter so many times that we decided everybody must have a bottle like that. So we’re going to set a date. The last Saturday in February, all of us were all going to open that special bottle and call it open that bottle night end”. Their column in the Wall Street Journal for Open That Bottle night was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and it elicited so many touching reader letters.
I’m recording this on the last Saturday of February, even though you may be listening to it after that date. Still make it your own. Open that bottle night tonight. Celebrate life and whatever memory that bottle brings back for you. That special bottle will also pair beautifully with the emotional ups and downs, mostly ups of Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation and Drinking too much. If you’d like to support the book and this podcast that I do for you on a volunteer basis to ensure continues, please order it from any online book retailer. No matter where you live, it usually arrives in a day or two. And of course, the e-book is instant. And the book is a fast reed. Every little bit helps spread the message in the book of hope, justice, and resilience. Buy a copy for a friend. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at Nataliemaclean.com/274. If you’ve read the book or are reading it, I’d love to hear from you at natalie@nataliemaclean.
Okay, on with the show.
Natalie MacLean (00:04:54) – Maybe take us through Burgundy. There’s two famous slopes. The Côte de Nuit and the Côte de Beaune. Like, what do we see as we walk through or drive through Burgundy? What is it like visually?
Raymond Blake (00:05:14) – I always say to people, when I’m talking about Burgundy, you have to talk slightly in broad brush strokes. But as soon as I say something to people when I’m doing the tours and I’m leading groups, I always say there will be an exception to everything I tell you. But if I tell you every exception, I’ll never tell you anything. So I have to talk in broad brush strokes with regard to the Côte de Nuits, which is to the north, the Côte de Beaune to the south. And they make up the Côte d’Or. The Golden Slope. Golden Slope is what people normally say it means. But people also suggest that the Or or d apostrophe or is referring to the Orient, meaning the east facing slope, so it’s facing the Orient. I’m not sure which the derivation is correct. But to the north of the Cote de Nuits, which is simpler in the sense that it’s a more linear line of villages that follow.
So you go south of the city of Dijon, and the first Grand Cru that you come to are in Gevrey-Chambertin, and then you move on to Morey-St-Denis, Chambolle-St.Denis and so on and so fourth down to Nuits-St-George. And then you cross over into the Côte de Beaune. The Côte de Nuits is. Principally the great red wines come from the Côte de Nuits. The great white wines come from the Côte de Beane. But again, that’s a generalization. And the one thing you notice as you move south then is it spreads out more, it sprawls more. The Côte de Beaune is less linear and it has the villages Pommard, Volnay, Meursault and so on. But there’s like an inner line, what I call an inner line of villages like St-Romain, St-Aubin, Monthelie and Auxey-Duresses and so on. So it’s more sprawling. I would say most people would agree that the Côte de Nuits is more patrician in the sense that’s where Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is. That’s where Chambertin, Musigny all these incredible names are up there.
But the Côte de Beaune answers with all the Montrachet ones and Charlemagne and so forth. I think you were saying if you were walking along. I love walking the vineyards, by the way. It’s absolutely fabulous. There’s more maybe to see in the Côte de Beaune. And since you’ve got the great big hill, you’ve got the hill of Corton and so on like that. And as you get to the end of it, it begins to break up around Santenay and crops of rock. I said, it’s a bit like a wave coming in to shore. It breaks. It tumbles. The landscape and the geography, geology. It becomes much more fractured. Whereas it’s much more regular in the Coton way. But you did mention about walking the vineyards, and that’s the one thing I say to people, walk the vineyards. If you get the chance, put your feet on the ground. And that’s when I’ll never forget.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw the name Gevrey-Chambertin as the name of a village. Up until then, I’d never seen it anywhere except on the label of a bottle. And then you see, and you say it’s a real place. There’s a village hall and there’s a boulangerie and a war memorial. There’s always a war memorial. What might have been a very foggy understanding up until then, it really does begin to resolve into a much clearer understanding. And that’s why I talked about the complication earlier. That’s the one way around it. Visit. Go visit. That’s the one advice I’d always give people.
Natalie MacLean (00:08:21) – Yeah. And make the place a part of you, especially not just walking along, but of course tasting the wine. I think you start to develop an internal geography through your senses that is more deeply implanted than, as you say, just seeing the name on a wine label that’s all abstract.
Raymond Blake (00:08:38) – Yeah, it takes it out into the realm of the abstract. Exactly, exactly.
Natalie MacLean (00:08:41) – Yeah, that’s how we learn. Full sensory. Let’s touch it. let’s feel it. Let’s smell it. Let’s walk it. Absolutely. And how did this region come to the world’s attention in the first place? How did it emerge and make a splash on the scene?
Raymond Blake (00:08:56) – Very good. There has been wine made in the culture for about 2000 years, but within the confines of this talk, let’s skip a thousand years forward to when the monk, the Benedictines and the Cistercians. The Benedictines, first at the Abbey of Cluny and then the Cistercians at the Abbey of Citeaux. They put their stamp on. I wrote once that Burgundy was made for them and they were made for Burgundy. It was a hand-in-glove fit. There was this complex geology there, and they studied it carefully. I said that they got down. They tasted the soil. That’s probably apocryphal, but they began to categorize things and work out this slope was favoured over that slope. This grape does better there and so forth. And one of the reasons that they were able to make this so useful was because they could read and write, and they could keep records, and they built up what we would now call a database. So they were able to go back and say, ten years ago, what did we do there when we had this sort of weather and so on and so forth.
Raymond Blake (00:10:00) – So gradually they worked out what was what. And then typically they would build a wall around a vineyard that they said everything from within there has a certain character, so we’ll mark it with a wall. And this, if you think about it, so many of these places are called clos C L O S. Clos de Vougeot. Clos de St-Denis. And of course, if you think about it in the English word enclosed, you’ve got clo in the middle of enclosed. Think about that and you realize what they mean by that. And typically then they might even put a pathway where they noticed a difference from one side to the other. Why not build a path allowing us to mark that difference? So gradually they built up this picture of the place.
Then also, it’s worth remembering that Burgundy, geographically Burgundy, lay and indeed lies on a major trading route that went north south from the Mediterranean, all the way on up to the Low Countries and on up into the Scandinavian into the Baltic countries. So that allowed word to spread. Burgundy was a wealthy. During the time of the Dukes of Burgundy, it was a very wealthy region through trade and so forth. You can still see it in the Hospice de Beaune, the magnificent building of the Hospice du Beaune, which is one of France’s most visited historic monuments. So that’s the sort of thing that put on the map and the quality of the wine. There’s no doubt that they were making lovely wine and the word got out about us and the word is still there.
Natalie MacLean (00:11:23) – And then Napoleon complicated things with his Napoleonic code and broke up everything, didn’t he? As opposed to Bordeaux, where that didn’t happen. Primogeniture first son inherits everything. Big large estate.
Raymond Blake (00:11:34) – And the complication is unbelievable, to be honest with you. In terms of inheritance, where let’s say you have two small domaines, just three children in one domaine and two children in the other. And of course, it divides equally between them all. But of course, there’s another force working the other way as well is that the son in this domaine might marry the daughter from this domaine, and that creates a new domaine.
So this is the constant, but it keeps fragmenting. I said, yeah, it is fragmenting, but it’s also coalescing at the same time. That’s a rather simplified version of what’s going on. Because typically as well, what’s happened is in more prestigious domains, they’ll have set up a company where the various family members own shares in the company rather than own the specific vineyard land itself. And hence they typically may perhaps try to buy back shareholdings from distant cousins and so forth. But that can make things very difficult because you have maybe there’s a cousin in New Zealand who’s never even been to Burgundy, but they have rights. All they want every year is a good dividend and to worry about the quality of the wine. And that can create all sorts of pressures on the people who are actually in charge. So it goes on and on. And then within families you’ve got stuff divided. And then you might think that the titular owner of a domaine, but perhaps sitting behind him are three siblings, and they may be calling the shots as well, and saying what should be done and all the rest of it like that. Yeah. Very complicated. But yes, as you say, the Napoleonic code of inheritance, as I was going to say a lot to answer, has something to answer for because, as I said, it can bring things together as well when you get marriages happening.
Natalie MacLean (00:13:13) – Sure. And you’ve mentioned Domaine Romané- Conti, which is probably perhaps the most famous Burgundian wine or the one most people have heard of. DRC as the cool kids would say. Approximately how much does its priciest bottle go for on release these days?
Raymond Blake (00:13:29) – Oh gosh, that’s a good question. It’s very hard to say. I think the release price is maybe around a thousand a bottle. I’m just not sure, to be honest. It’d be interesting to see what happens now when they’ll do the tasting of the ’21 vintage now in February. Now, the 21 vintage is tiny but there is a bit of a price correction happening in at the very high end at the moment. Now, in the secondary market, prices have stalled and they’re coming down this year.
Natalie MacLean (00:13:53) – And why would that be? I would think the world’s demand would still be increasing with new markets coming online, seeking those finer wines, whether it’s in India or China or Brazil or wherever.
Raymond Blake (00:14:03) – Yeah, I don’t understand the whole economics of it, but the one thing I’d say is like it had gone so high, could it have gone any higher? And what what goes up must come down as well. Like say, a 1990 Romanée-Conti I think the last traded price was maybe 25,000, 30,000 a bottle. Something like that. But there’s another producer. He’s dead now…. like his wines sell for unimaginable prices. And yet, 25 years ago, I could buy his wines for about £60 a bottle. £60 a bottle then was quite a bit of money. But as I say in my book Wine Talk, all I had to do was exercise my credit card, give it a bit of a punishing workout to buy a few bottles Nowadays – and I’m not joking – I’d have to sell the house because it’s now 20000, 25000 a bottle.
So I’m just I’m delighted to be able to say I drank those wines. And people to ask me then why are they so expensive? I always talk like a three legged stool. I think it’s like a perfect storm. Number one, in recent years in Burgundy, quality has never really been better. Number two, for many years in Burgundy their recently quantity was affected by the weather but not quality, and already restricted. Supply was getting smaller, but the quality was still good. But number three, economists and bankers who I know they don’t really take any notice of this. They poo my number three reason. It’s fashion. Fashion is the most incredible force. And as I say, fashion is like the weather. It’s difficult to predict and impossible to control.
And you just can’t say, and right across Burgundy now, there are some producers whose names they’ve just gone up in lights, and others who are producing just as good a wine, and they’re selling for a high price, but not they’re not in what I call the Golden Circle. And I don’t really understand that, to be quite honest. Something becomes fashionable. And it’s like Hermes bags.
Natalie MacLean (00:15:54) – Yeah, exactly. For those of us who can’t afford Hermes bags or $1,000 a bottle, is there still hope for those of us who love Burgundy for something affordable?
Raymond Blake (00:16:04) – Yeah, there are two answers really to that. Number one, if you go outside Côte d’Or. Straight away, you’ll come across Côte Chalonnaise. Particularly, you’ll see really very nice wine at a much more affordable price. And those wines have improved enormously in recent years because there’s a reason for them to improve. There’s a demand coming in for them now so they can take greater care with them. There was one. Aubert de Villaine, the co-owner of Romanée-Conti, and his wife Pamela, who’s from California, as soon as he became involved in DRC and they got married, they set up their own domaine as well in the Côte Chalonnaise, and it’s called Domaine de Villaine. It’s now run by their nephew, Pierre. And I did a tasting with him there a little while back. And I came home and said to my wife, we must buy some of these wines, because if they were from the Côte d’Or rather than the Côte Chalonnaise, they would be twice the price. But they’re just as good. We want to get back there and do that.
The other thing, and the two wines I have to taste here would be examples of this. That’s one of the reasons I chose them is that at the lower level, at the most basic entry level, that’s where the greatest increase in quality has come. The peaks of achievement aren’t much higher than they ever were, but the troughs are much shallower and that’s where the value is to be found as well. So if you get a basic the most basic entry level wine from a really prestigious producer, you’re going to get some serious stuff. Because I also think as well they take great pride in making these wines because they would I think they would say to you, look, if I can’t make a good Grand Cru wine, I shouldn’t be in this game. But it takes much more effort to do a basic Bourgogne. Or of course the. Sorry, another thing you asked me earlier about was big changes.
Raymond Blake (00:17:50) – One of the big changes you’re seeing now is the rise and rise of the Aligoté grape. It’s incredible. You’re seeing wonderful quality made by all sorts of people. So the entry level wines are better than ever, and they’d be where I’d be directing people. And that’s your way in. Then you say, oh I like this style here or I don’t like that style there. So I’ll follow this producer and move on up.
Natalie MacLean (00:18:12) – Yeah, you can go up the ladder of their different levels of quality if you find it. Speaking of wines that you have there to taste, would love for you to tell us about them. Maybe start with the first one you want to show us and let us know how it tastes.
Raymond Blake (00:18:28) – Of course, I’ve also sent you photos of that, so maybe you can put them up.
Natalie MacLean (00:18:31) – Yeah, I will, I’ll put them in the show notes. Yeah. For sure.
Raymond Blake (00:18:35) – Okay, that’s fine so the people will be able to look at them carefully. So this is a Bourgogne Blanc from Jean-Marc Vincent, who’s a neighbour. His house is 200m from our house. So as I always tell people, I collect wine from him. We buy a few cases from him every year and we bring it home in a wheelbarrow. Literally carry it home in a wheelbarrow. I think I might have sent you that photograph, Natalie.
Natalie MacLean (00:18:55) – Yeah, well, gives new meaning to going over to the neighbours and asking for a cup of sugar.
Raymond Blake (00:18:59) – So we’ve got his Bourgogne Blanc, and I’m using a universal glass. I think he makes it delicious. I love all his wines, by the way. I think his whites are excellent and his reds are very good, and his daughter is about to join him as well in the thing. But let’s have a little taste.
Natalie MacLean (00:19:16) – Sure. Yeah. And tell us what to get from that now.
Raymond Blake (00:19:21) – I chose the two wines here, red and white, for various reasons. I always say the golden rule when buying Burgundy is producer who made the wine. It’s like buying property location. That’s the only thing the matter. Only when you know that should you look further about at the vintage and the vineyard. The two producers I have chosen here Jean-Marc Vincent and Jean-Claude Ramonet. I have the highest regard for. I think they are excellent.
And therefore you can then look and say, what about this is the 2021 vintage? In both cases, for both my wines here this evening, the 2021 vintage, a really challenging vintage in Burgundy. Most people will have heard catastrophic reports about it. And while they’re true, I don’t want them to completely obliterate the picture. It’s always more nuanced than the headline suggests. Remember that any bit of news is more nuanced than the headline suggests. And the key thing here is, while many producers suffered catastrophic losses, maybe 80% losses, the wines that were made in the end are pretty damn good. They’re not great, but they’re far better than people expected. Not only that, people are saying they’re a bit like a throwback to a lovely vintage from the 1980s.
When my descriptive term for the style of the wines from 2021 in general, is that what I call a lighter weave. The fabric isn’t as dense. There’s not as many stitches to the square inch, you might say. They are a lighter weave, and in some ways they’re more transparent. And people would say that maybe you’ve got a better expression of the terroir rather than the vintage coming through here. So both are from ’21. Both very challenging.
Let’s as I say try this again. Delicious, clear, juicy fruit, a lovely, pure citric acidity coming through. They’re not rich. That’s the key thing that ’21 doesn’t have. It doesn’t have a lot of I’d call ballast in the flavour. But you’ll notice is while I’m chatting away here I can barely talk now because there’s so much saliva running in my mouth. This delicious acidity there coming through, which gives me great hope for the future that the wine is going to age. Now, some people, if people have got used to the richer styles in the last say, let’s say 5 – 10 years from the warm vintages that we’ve had, where the wines are more opulent and succulent and that sort of thing. These will come as a little bit of a wake up call to the palate I think in the sense that it’s a little bit more as I would say. I see wine on a spectrum between comforting at one end and challenging at the other, but these wines have moved towards the challenging end of the spectrum rather than towards the comforting end of the spectrum, if that makes any sense at all. I hope it does.
Natalie MacLean (00:22:08) – It does. Yeah.
Raymond Blake (00:22:10) – With this wine, I wouldn’t be pairing it with, say, richly sauced fish or turbot, but certainly with seafood. With chicken, be lovely with chicken as well, but not too dominant flavours. It doesn’t have huge amount of depth there, but it’s absolutely delicious.
Natalie MacLean (00:22:27) – Oh, it sounds great. And you said that some winemakers did experience catastrophic loss. Was that because of was it cold on like they weren’t ripening?
Raymond Blake (00:22:38) – Yes, through the season the weather.
Natalie MacLean (00:22:39) – Was it’s not a good vintage? ?ots of rain and at the wrong time frost.
Raymond Blake (00:22:43) – There was lots of rain. We were there in August and like my wife was saying, could we turn on the central heating? And it normally has been 35°C. And it was like an Irish summer. That’s the only way I could describe is like an Irish summer. It was cloudy and gray and chilly. It was an aberration really, and made it hugely challenging. I was there just last week. I was there with Francois Carrion He lost about 80% and as a consequence, one of the things he did was he went and bought Chardonnay grapes from the south of France just to make a wine, just to make a basic Chardonnay wine. And the interesting thing is he’s continued to make it. He still makes it now, even though he has got good quantities from ’22 and ’23. This is now one of his signature wines, and it’s just what they call a Vin de France. It’s not a Burgundy or anything like that. It’s a lovely wine, really nice wine. That was something good that came out of the…
Natalie MacLean (00:23:35) – That’s true. Diversify a little bit and maybe make something a more affordable as well. And what is the second wine that you have there?
Raymond Blake (00:23:42) – The second wine I’ve a red wine from Jean-Claude Ramonet. So it’s a Bourgogne Rouge. Again ’21 vintage. Now, Jean-Claude is far better known for his white wines, but this is a red Chassange as well. It’s not just that it’s Burgundy rouge, but he makes red Chassagne-Montrachet and everyone assumes that Chassagne is white because of the Montrachet name in it. But he’s one of the great exponents of the red. Now he as I say, he makes great white wines as well. A great guy and the connection between the two of them is that I was at a tasting in Jeane-Claude’s cellar. There was ten people there or something, all French, and they were speaking at a thousand miles an hour. It was really difficult to try and keep track. And this man who I’d never met before, he came across and he said to me, can you understand what’s being said here? And I said, I’m struggling now. And he said, I’ll translate for you. And that man was Jean-Claude Ramonet. Jean-Marc Vincent sorry. Jean-Marc Vincent, who made our first our white wine and who is our neighbour. We’d never met him until we went to this cellar. It was fantastic.
But Ramonet. I just love tasting at Ramonet. I should tell you about him. He’s an extraordinary guy. This harks back to something I said to you there about half an hour ago. You get really earnest people there with their notebooks, and they’re saying to Jean-Claude and the malolactic when. And he goes (exhale of breath). And the temperature fermentation and he goes (exhale of breath). And what about this and this and all these technical, really earnest questions with their notebooks out? And the only thing he does diligently, he’ll point to a large scale map on the wall, and he’ll point exactly where the vines grow. As far as he’s concerned, that’s the key thing. That’s what gives them their character. Where did the vines put down their roots? That’s what defines the wine. And that’s what he takes really seriously. In other words, he’s there are not interested or whatever. But anyway, his red wines I think are superb.
Raymond Blake (00:25:38) – You take a sniff of this. And it just says, drink me. It’s just got this immediate attraction. It’s just incredible.
Natalie MacLean (00:25:47) – What aromas would you get for those who are trying to envision or whatever would be the corollary for smell.
Raymond Blake (00:25:54) – I think of red cherries, not dark cherries, red fruits. But with this one, I always think it’s as if there’s a you’ve taken a bunch of grapes and you’ve just squeezed it, and you’re literally just. It seems to have been transformed into wine while still carrying all its character. It’s light again in structure, delicious acidity, delicious red fruits, ripe red fruits with just a little whisper of something more complex, a little bit of spice, a little bit of that sort of thing coming in which if you kept it for ten years would probably become more pronounced. And I have drunk Ramonet’s red wines at 40 years of age at 50. And. I was a great believer. I was a total nerd with regard to the Apollo moon landings and all this. And on the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon in 1969, the 21st of July, I think it was. On the exact 40th anniversary. I opened a 1969 Ramonet Rouge, and I saluted the moon from our garden in Burgundy and drank it down. It was absolutely magnificent, almost ageless, beautiful, pure, lacy character, not heavy or rich, but this beautiful intensity. I often say about his these wines when they’re right. It’s like a ballet dancer and not a weightlifter. A weightlifter is obviously strong. A ballet dancer is not obviously strong, but beneath that lithe exterior, they’re extraordinarily strong. But it’s well hidden amongst grace. There’s grace and elegance and that sort of thing. And that’s what you tend to get in his wines as well.
Natalie MacLean (00:27:33) – Lovely, lovely. Very poetic, I love it. Wow. You keep sipping on those wines of course, Raymond. You’re heading into your weekend here. But let’s get to the lightning round because I wanted to ask you a few questions that are here because I know you’ve got some props nearby. So what is maybe something you believe about wine, with which a lot of people might strongly disagree.
Raymond Blake (00:27:56) – They always raise an eyebrow when I tell them, look I usually drink a bottle of wine over three evenings. That sounds right, surely. I said, look, we’ve become too prissy about wine, but we’ve got to just take it more casually. And when I see the way people drink wine in France or Italy or Spain, it’s not a sacred item that they put on a pedestal. And the one thing I say to people is – and I do this all the time – I open a bottle of wine and I drink a glass or two or whatever it might be, and I put it in the fridge. Red or white, I put it in the fridge. If it’s red, I take it out maybe two hours before I want it the next day, and it’s frequently better the next day. And sometimes I then just decide, let’s see how long it’ll go, because I want to find out how long this will go before I notice deterioration. And it’s usually after 3 to 4 days that there’s noticeable deterioration.
But after 24 hours, there’s frequently a noticeable improvement. Because if you think about most of the wine we buy today, now is very young. It’s almost just the recent vintage or the next to most recent vintage. So that’s something that does raise eyebrows, I must say. Really does. And something else, certainly at home here, perhaps the same with you. I’m forever telling people to serve their red wines cooler. I want people to throw out the idea of room temperature. I said room temperatures when we all lived in draughty castles before central heating. Room temperature here now in Celsius here is maybe 21 degrees. Most back labels, if it’s on the back label and wine, will tell you to serve it in celsius between 16 and 18 degrees. And I always say to people that is noticeably cool to the touch. It must be noticeably cool to the touch. And if by any chance you serve it too cold like a small amount in a big glass, it’s going to warm up in five minutes. Whereas if it’s too warm, it becomes soupy and the flavour begins to fragment. It falls apart. It’s no good. So that’s something else. I’m forever going on about.
Natalie MacLean (00:29:57) – Those are good tips. Really good tips. Now, is there an unusual food and wine pairing that has been memorable for you? Or a childhood food that used to eat and now you’d pair it with wine?
Raymond Blake (00:30:09) – I tell you, I come to that in a second, because I was going to answer your first question obliquely by saying, what would I use as a versatile wine to make matches that you might not expect? There are two wine styles, I think, that are incredibly versatile. Gruner Veltliner from Austria and Fino or Manzanilla sherry from Spain. And there was one – in fact, I think I’ve written about it in my book Wine Talk – I drank with my host. I drank a bottle of Fino Sherry right the way through the meal. So we’d all sorts of things, be it meat, seafood or whatever. And the only thing you couldn’t possibly pairs with was the dessert. The sweet dessert. That’s fine.
So Gruner Veltliner and Fino or Manzanilla sherry, I think are fantastically versatile. And there’s a story I tell about when I was young. I was a terror for food. I just love my food. I was always plaguing my mother. But what did you how did you cook that? It’s different. What did you put in that? Show me how you did this. But there was one foodstuff which I can’t claim to have eaten this very often, but I remember my grandmother’s house. She had a cousin down the country who was a butcher and sent up veal sweetbreads. Or we would say ris de veaux. R I S. Sweetbreads are pancreas and thymus glands of the calf, and they’re an acquired taste. I acquired the taste very quickly. It took no more than a few minutes. At the age of ten, I could see the adults were all saying, oh, look, we’ve got the sweetbreads. just rinse them off, throw them onto the pan, fry them in some butter, and the enthusiasm of them just brought me forward and something I’d never tasted before. I was bound to love it because of the enthusiasm they were showing.
And sure enough, I did. And today I would always match that. Now you need a richer Burgundy for that. You need a richer white Burgundy, like a good, nutty, traditional Meursault to go with those with a nice sauce, maybe made with some ceps or something like that. There’s a restaurant in Beaune called Ma Cuisine. They do them to perfection there. And as I say, red sweetbreads, they sit at the intersection of taste and texture. And I always tell people, never forget the texture. That’s so important as well. But that’s a great match for me. Yeah, yeah.
Natalie MacLean (00:32:19) – Oh. Sounds wonderful. Wow, you’re making me hungry and thirsty. So what’s the most useful wine gadget you’ve come across?
Raymond Blake (00:32:27) – I want to show you at least two things. But that one thing, which. It’s the simplest thing of all. It’s the DropStop. The little circular piece of plastic foil that you turn around in case anyone hasn’t seen it, and you put it into the…
Natalie MacLean (00:32:42) – For those who are listening on the podcast, it’s like a little silver circle and you put it in a conal shape, put it on the top of the bottle, insert it.
Raymond Blake (00:32:51) – And the great thing about it is it’s cheap as chip number one. It works every time. It stops you dropping your red wine onto your lovely white linen tablecloth. It’s incredibly durable. You can wash it and use it again and again. And unlike some really fancy accessories which promise a lot and don’t deliver very much and interfere with your enjoyment of the wine, this doesn’t interfere. It does its job silently, again and again. Wonderful.
Now, what I’ve got here is this is what I call an early 20th century Coravin. This is a Champagne Tap. Now for those people who can see it and I’m holding it up here like this threaded screw here is a tiny hollow tube. I don’t know if you can see, but there are some holes along the side of it. Now what you would do is you screw that down into the Champagne bottle. Now you were able to do it because now you’re not going to be able to see this. But this is an ancient bottle of Champagne. I bought it at an auction years and years ago. 1952 vintage. If you feel the top of that there where the metal disc is, there’s actually an indentation in it because there’s a hole in the metal disc. That’s what used to be the case, to allow this to be screwed down into the thing like that. You screw it down into it, and then you have a little tap at the end to pour out your glass of Champagne. Now, I’ve never had to use it, because I’ve never had the difficulty of only wanting one glass. Preserving a bottle, that sort of thing, that doesn’t ever strike me too much. I think Coravin is fantastic, but it does work. I’ve never had that much use for it to be honest with you.
Natalie MacLean (00:34:34) – No, I truly have useful gadgets, not those that sit around and collect dust. But we’ll put a picture of the things that you’ve been talking about in the show notes, so that those who are listening can see what we’re talking about. Let’s see. Oh my gosh, I could talk to you for longer, but let’s let’s just wrap up with a few quick ones. If you could share a bottle with anyone, living or dead, who would that be? Which wine would you open?
Raymond Blake (00:34:56) – That’s so tricky. We talked about Bach and Beethoven earlier. They’re too obvious candidates, but I think one of the most significant figures in world history is Napoleon Bonaparte. Now, you can look at it in various ways. There’s no doubt he was. He was a bit of a despot more than anything else. But he was an extraordinary man that the stamp he left on France is still there. France is still run along his lines, not just the Napoleonic Code of inheritance, but the whole Napoleonic Code is still hugely influential in France. The other reason I’d probably choose him is because he drank Chambertin which is one of the great wines of Burgundy.
Natalie MacLean (00:35:32) – So he was civilized.
Raymond Blake (00:35:34) – Yeah, exactly. Although he did dilute us with water, which we won’t speak about. So I would like to have him as guest. And secondly, I would obviously drink Champagne from Domaine Armand Rousseau. I would ask Napoleon for his opinion of that. Now, I’ve just mentioned one of those wines that circulates in that ridiculous stratosphere of price. If you wanted to get something that would approximate that, there’s a Domaine du Roché. DU R O C H E accent. Du Roché is a magnificent producer in Gerry-Chambertin. His wines are wonderful and they’re much, much cheaper. They’re not cheap, but they’re much, much cheaper than Rousseau. If you want to try and replicate the conversation with Napoleon.
Natalie MacLean (00:36:18) – Wow, that’s great, Raymond. We’re going to put links to all your books, your website, everything in the show notes so that people can get your books and find you. But is there anything we haven’t covered you wanted to mention before we wrap up?
Raymond Blake (00:36:32) – Wow, not so much. I would in a piece of shameless self-promotion, I would just emphasize that I do the wine tours as well. I work with a company called Iberian Wine Tours and I love doing them. Most of the clients come from across the Atlantic and they come back again and again. The tours are everywhere. I do the Burgundy tours. I just love doing that because I love as I say to the bus driver, drive us up here, stop for a minute, and I’m going to tell people about this. And then we go back and say, now we’re going to drink that wine. And that to me, that closes the circle. So I’d love to think that if anyone is hoping to visit, I’d love to show you around Burgundy, no question about it.
Natalie MacLean (00:37:08) – Yeah, we’re definitely going to put a link to your tour company in the show notes, because I’m sure a lot of people would like to be guided around, especially with such a great storyteller.
Raymond Blake (00:37:18) – That’s great.
Natalie MacLean (00:37:20) – Awesome. And did you want to mention your website or anything in particular online? Maybe you’re big on Instagram.
Raymond Blake (00:37:29) – I should. I’m on. I was going to say I’m on Twitter. I don’t know, I’ve refused to call it X, but I’m afraid I have to get back. My website is, shall we say, sleeping at the moment. I need to get back on to that. But also I should mention I would like to obviously mention my book Wine Talk, which I know you’re going to mention.
Natalie MacLean (00:37:46) – Yes, please.
Raymond Blake (00:37:47) – I love that it was published in New York. And of course, the other book which I contributed to the On Burgundy book, which again…
Natalie MacLean (00:37:53) – Beautiful books. And we’ll put in the show notes pictures of these and links to them as well by Academy du Vin, the latter one or they both weren’t. The On Burgundy is right?
Raymond Blake (00:38:05) – Wine Talk was. Published in New York actually. Yeah. And it’s not specifically Burgundy, but the On Burgundy book. One of the great joys about that is and there’s about 30 different contributors, so you can just open it at any page you like and see another view of Burgundy, another aspect, another interpretation. So that is a primer for Burgundy. It’s a great book because some of them are very light articles, others are much more technical, and it gives you a great spread of opinion and author.
Natalie MacLean (00:38:34) – Sounds like a literary box of chocolates. Dive in and dive out and savour.
Raymond Blake (00:38:40) – A literary box of chocolates with no marzipan.
Speaker 4 (00:38:44) – Oh, okay, great.
Natalie MacLean (00:38:45) – That’s always a bonus. So goodbye for now, and I look forward to continuing this conversation. And perhaps we can meet in Burgundy someday.
Raymond Blake (00:38:56) – Yes, definitely.
Speaker 4 (00:38:58) – All right.
Natalie MacLean (00:38:58) – Cheers, Raymond. See you.
Natalie MacLean – Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Raymond. Here are my takeaways. Number one, how did the French region of Burgundy come to the world’s attention as a wine region originally? Well, number one was the influence of the Benedictine and Cistercian monks in developing the winemaking techniques and in categorising the vineyards in Burgundy. Two, as Raymond mentioned, geography as a trade route. And three the high quality of the wine. The word spread about these wines. Number two, what’s the golden rule for buying Burgundy, especially Pinot noir? Well, start with the producer who made the wine. It’s like buying property where location is the only thing that matters, or at least matters most. As they say location, location, location. And number three, what’s behind the sometimes eye watering stratospheric prices of Burgundian wines? Well, fashion and market trends and the rise and fall of secondary markets like wine auctions and others.
In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Raymond, links to his website and books, and the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now no matter where you live. You can also find a link to take a free online wine and food pairing class with me called the Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them Forever at nataliemaclean.com/class. All of these links are in the show notes at nataliemaclean/274.
Email me if you have a sip, tip, question, or if you’ve read my book or are in the process of reading it at natalie@natalie maclean.com. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this podcast or guests I should interview, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
If you missed episode 116, go back and take a listen. I chat about Open That Bottle Night with the former Wall Street Journal columnists Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
John Brecher (00:41:10) – The most common question that we got was, I have this one bottle of wine. I got it at auction. My father left it to me. It’s from our wedding. I’ve had it forever. When should I open it? And then they’d kind of whisper and how much is it worth?
Natalie MacLean (00:41:28) – It’s like the Antiques Roadshow. Like, is it worth anything?
John Brecher (00:41:32) – Every time we’d write back and we’d say, you know something? That wine is priceless. You should drink it. Make a special meal this weekend. Drink it and celebrate your mother. Or celebrate your long ago wedding. Celebrate whatever is in that bottle. We got this letter so many times that we decided everybody must have a bottle like that. So we’re going to set a date last Saturday and February, all of us together. And we’re going to open that bottle. And we called it Open That Bottle Night.
Natalie MacLean (00:42:09) – You won’t want to miss next week when we chat with Priya Rao, writer and television personality, as well as Master Sommelier Jennifer Huether, who together have published the first ever plant based food and wine matching book called The Social Herbivore. Priya joins us from Toronto, while Jen logs in from Las Vegas to share their surprising tips on pairing wines with a wide variety of delicious vegetarian and vegan dishes.
If you like this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell one friend about it this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about the wines and region of Burgundy. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on their favourite podcast app or they can listen to it on my website. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps another heartbreakingly beautiful Pinot Noir that doesn’t require remortgaging your house.
Natalie MacLean (00:43:15) – You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at naataliemaclean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.
