Tonight's wine comes from a genius when he was at the height of his powers; as opposed to now when he produces filth.

Riesling Grand Cru Schoenenbourg 1993, Domaine Marcel Deiss
This has a beautiful, exotic nose of passion fruit, mango, lime and earth. It is quite a German-style Riesling nose. The palate is wonderfully balanced and precise, and almost totally dry unlike his more recent offerings. This acidity is strong but perfectly balanced. The palate of this wine is like Michelangelo's David: beautifully sculpted, elegant, yet quite masculine. There is plenty of fruit, the finish is very long and it really speaks of where it was grown. This is a fabulous wine. Why, Jean-Michel Deiss, did you start making atrocious monstrosities rather than beauties like this?

Volnay Premier Cru les Mitans 1993, Hubert de Montille
This has an exceptionally beautiful nose of raspberries and soft earth. It has a very sedate level of alcohol (12% claimed) making this pure and focused rather than ripe and heady. The palate is very vigorous and full of life. It has good, fruity acidity and obvious tannins, but it is such a little gem of fruit and charm that these do not unbalance it. It is very well balanced, in fact, and very lovely. An excellent Volnay that is drinking very well now.

This will be consumed with roast duck, and with great pleasure. It is a seriously lovely and seriously fine wine.

There could well be plenty of Rhône wine notes over the coming months as I have just been back to my cellar in Oxford and picked out quite a few 1996 and 1997 Northern-Rhône wines.

Côte-Rôtie 1997, Bernard Burgaud
A soft nose of mature red fruit. It is ripe but by no means over-ripe; quite sedate, in fact. M. Burgaud says he aims for 'noble tannins' in his wine. This wine is certainly tannic, but those tannins have softened with time and the wine is most pleasingly soft and charming. It has plenty of red fruit on the palate, a balancing backbone of tannin and acidity and is quite long. This is not a great vintage, but the wine is quite lovely. Up for drinking, too.

A lovely birthday meal last night, with plenty of people present who I am lucky enough to count among my friends. We ate well and drank exceptionally well.

Krug 1990
This was a seriously fine bottle of champagne. It was quite acidic and austere, but had plenty of weight and power. It was very ripe despite the acidity, so the balance was perfect making this a great wine. It was also a lovely drink.

Riesling Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese Lange Goldkapsel 1975, J J Prum
A wine the same age as four of us present for the meal. This was very concentrated, but ethereal, light and elegant. It had very balanced fruit and acidity. It was very long. A wonderful wine and I really appreciated drinking it.

Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Folatieres 1995, Gerard Chavy
This started off quite subdued, but it opened up given time and blossomed into a lovely, complex, mineral Puligny. I was surprised it had aged so well.

Riesling Kellerberg 1999, F X Pichler
A linear, direct and focused Austrian Riesling. It had the typical white pepper nose and it was very mineral. Despite its focus and directness it did have a degree of fat and was very well balanced. I thought this slipped down a treat.

Grand Vin D'Altenberg 1997, Domaine Marcel Deiss
I bloody hated this. It was too sweet, with too little acidity and a weird melange of flavours that suggested the constituent components were ageing at wildly different rates. The loon Deiss has really gone from wine-making god to contemptible swine far too quickly. Bad show, M. Deiss.

Clos des Lambrays 1999, Domaine des Lambrays en magnum
Oh yes, back to the good stuff. This was a beautiful, earthy, very complex wine with great length and real style. It helped that it was decanted as it really was far too young, but it was clearly a great wine by any definition of the word and was a joy to drink. I loved it.

Chambertin 1993, Domaine Rousseau
Another stunningly good red Burgundy. It was very complex, with soft, charming, generally lovely fruit. The length was superb, as was the balance. It sang a song of beauty on my palate and I thought this was a candidate for wine of the night.

Echezeaux 1985, Domaine Henri Jayer
Corked, alas! Bugger, bugger, bugger.

Chateau La Mission Haut-Brion 1975 en magnum
Another great wine where the fantastic balance was the key to its greatness. It had lovely, voluptuous fruit, roundness and weight, but a backbone of acidity and focus that made it burst with life. This was an incredibly fine wine and a strong contender for wine of the night. It was great, and another one that slipped down a treat.

Quarts de Chaumes 1996, Domaine des Baumards
This was incredibly botrytic and ripe with lots of fruit. The palate had lots of good acidity as well as plenty of sugar, so the balance was good. I really enjoy Baumard Quarts de Chaumes and this did not disappoint.

A few things last night when a chum dropped around for dinner.

Riesling Grand Cru Sommerberg L31D 2002, Domaine Albert Boxler
This was really good, a great balance between ripe fruit, minerality and acidity. It was lively, invigorating and exciting. A top drink.

Domaine de Trevallon 1997
For those who don't know, a Cabernet/Syrah blend from the South of France. Good fruit, palate quite austere and linear. It opened up in the decanter and became quite lovely.

Hermitage la Chapelle 1995, Paul Jaboulet-Aine
This was really good. Perhaps not as rich and weighty as some might except, but big, full of fruit and really complex nonetheless. A seriously fine wine with a great future in front of it.

Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel Urziger Wurzgarten 2003, Dr. Loosen
Nice and fruity with surprisingly good acidity. It was quite sweet, reasonably typical for the vineyard and nice length. Balance was surprisingly good for a 2003.

It is my birthday soon, sadly. A few friends are meeting up for a nice meal and the wines have already been decided upon. Oddly there will be a lot of Burgundy consumed. As I muse upon those lovely wines that will be consumed in great company I find myself thinking about how good things can be.

Britain has historically been a great trading nation, and this has done wonders for our fine wine trade which is still one of the most dynamic in the world even now we are largely a comedy nation. We have invented a number of wine styles throughout history including Sherry, sparkling Champagne, Madeira, red (as opposed to rosé) Bordeaux and fortified Port. Yet, the British are notoriously shy and retiring, not people given to the visceral, sociable pleasures that wine provides.

The cunning solution of the British wine lover was to turn the pleasure of wine into an intellectual one. Rather than drinking fun wines, the fine wine market has until very recently been almost exclusively obsessed with red Bordeaux. Whilst Bordeaux can be be complex and interesting, it tends toward the hard, lean, austere, not-much-fun end of the wine spectrum. The best wines are undoubtedly great, but not always designed to put a big smile on one's face.

So, one might prefer to drink riper, fleshier, more fruity wines, such as those that come from Australia and the USA. These wines often provide a lot of visceral pleasure but frequently lack that extra dimension that I, as a British wine lover, seek: interest. There are some very complex, very interesting wines made in this style, really quite a remarkable number considering the very short period wines have been made in these areas, but sadly they tend to be too expensive for your humble narrator. Moreover, drinking more than a few glasses of them often leaves me completely paralytic. Strangely, getting completely news-casted is a pleasure I rarely seek.

The solution is clear: drink Burgundy! Burgundy is fleshy and fun, yet complex and interesting. It speaks about the area it comes from, it cheers me up and I can think about even more clearly after a couple of glasses because it is not booze-tastic. Simple village wines even from serious producers can be deeply affordable, if one buys carefully, yet will provide an awful lot of pleasure. People claim that Burgundy is difficult to understand; idleness seems a poor reason to miss out on some good experiences. I certainly do not mind applying myself to maximise the pleasure of myself and my guests.

As one of my favourite wine makers puts it, "Burgundy is best!"

The problem is I have so little in the flat to drink. A moment's searching reveals something I rather like, even though it is really too young:

Bandol, Château de Pibarnon 1999
The dark fruit and meat scented aroma that emerged as I popped this brought a rush of heroism to my cheeks as I inhaled it. There is a lot of dark, ripe fruit on the nose, but it is not over-ripe. It is quite earthy as well. The palate has big, chunky tannins, but with all of the fruit and not over-whelming alcohol it is very balanced. Despite its size the palate has a pleasing degree of precision about it, some acidity in with all of that ripe bigness. It is very long with quite an earthy finish. Big but balanced, I like this a lot.

This is a good wine, but it is perilously lacking in charm. I realise it is terribly young, but I do wonder whether this will become lovely with age.

Corton-Bressandes Grand Cru 2002, Domaine Chandon de Briailles
This is a very pale coloured Burgundy, but there is nothing wrong with that. The nose has a lot of fresh raspberry fruit and quite deep and concentrated. There is no interference here with huge amounts of new oak, it is a pure and focused nose. The fruit is very present on the palate, and it is quite dense despite being a light-bodied Grand Cru-style. It is certainly very long, and really quite mineral and complex, but the acidity is quite spiky. It lacks any real fat even with extended decanting and tends toward the extremely linear; it is not quite balanced. What it lacks quite noticeably is any real charm; it is not terribly fun to drink. I imagine a wine like this will retain its fruit but never really lose the high degree of focus which is currently preventing it from being lovely. I have the next-door vineyard from this producer that I shall re-visit in a decade with great interest. I must admit to preferring 'lovely', but I cannot deny that this is serious and it is by no means a bad drink.

A wine drank recently that similarly tickled my lovely bits as did the Boxler was one I failed to write up here. I provide the name as a recommendation as something affordable to look out for: Riesling Grand Cru Pfersigberg Vieille Vigne 2001 from Domaine Bruno Sorg. This was an excellent dry, stylish and direct wine that slightly challenges the limits of my stomach's acid tolerance, but I bloody love it. It is a fine wine by any definition. If you are aware of Trimbach's Cuvée Frédéric Emile Riesling this is remarkably similar: very linear, direct and focused, but with plenty of concentration and a hint of fat to keep one charmed. Lovely stuff and I have a case in my cellar!

The last wine written up is my idea of a fine wine. It is balanced, interesting and beautiful. I admit some good wines may lack one of these factors, but if something is really going to do rude things to my sense of smell and taste it has to hit these spots. This is a lovely wine, it spoke of the place it was made and spoke in a thrilling and exciting manner. I was compelled; I still am compelled with what remains in my glass. I don't feel tired or generally shagged-out when drinking a wine like this, even though it is quite big and ripe, but I want to dive in for another taste and witness the interest of the cepage, thrills of the site and the skill of the winemaker. So, this tickles my fancy in a 'tits out for the boys that is lovely'-way and it is intellectually stimulating as well. What more could a growing boy ask for?

Jean Boxler hits the spot once again with a brilliant wine. The mystic code refers to the plot of the Sommerberg Grand Cru that this wine is made from.

Riesling Grand Cru Sommerberg L31E 2002, Domaine Albert Boxler
The nose is incredibly stony but has a lot of ripe fruit; grapefruit and pineapple. The mineral character is carried through on the palate, which is very concentrated and dense yet balanced by a fine acidity. Although this is full-bodied and weighty, it is completely dry. The ripe fruit stands out on the finish, which is long with fine acidity and minerality. This is a deeply lovely wine from a Riesling master that will age exceptionally well. Quite stunning in its complexity and style. I love it.

The 'general drinking' category of notes will not be quite so detailed as when I try but a single wine. It is hard to write notes at a dinner party so general impressions alone survive in my mind.

Joh. Jos. Prum Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Spatlese 1994
Quite dry, with nice balance between fruit and acidity. Very good length, still really mineral and certainly a racy, exciting wine. I enjoyed it very much.

Gratien vintage brut 1996
Very chocolaty and doughy with a slight oxidative character. Really quite woody as well. Reminded me very much of Bollinger '96 which is no bad thing. I thought this would age really rather well, but some of our number were sure it was up for drinking.

Meursault Tillets 2001, Roulot
A beautiful, compact, elegant white Burgundy. Plenty of fruit and a bit floral. The palate was very well balanced with plenty of concentration. It was certainly long. This was a fine wine.

Riesling Grand Cru Rangen 1995, Zind-Humbrecht
This was surprisingly mature, a tad oxidised too, but it was still a nice wine. Very concentrated and powerful. As it was quite mature it seemed to have lost the sweetness these wines often have.

Morey St. Denis 2001, Domaine Dujac
A lovely wine. Great fruit, impeccable balance and real silky-style. A top-flight village wine. Dujac really landed on their feet in 2001.

There was a 2003 super-Tuscan red wine at this point that I failed to write down the name of and I am not going to try and embarrass myself by remembering how to spell it. It was very hot and quite severe. That is 2003 for you.

Pinot Gris Selection des Grains Nobles Hinterberg de Katzenthal 2001, Meyer-Fonné
A sweetie to finish off with. Nice Pinot Gris fruit and really quite a lot of botrytis. It was pretty sweet.

Nuits is slightly earthier, more meaty and generally butch than wines from my favourite Burgundy villages. However, a good example will still have elegance and balance, and this is a terribly good example.

Nuits St Georges Premier Cru Vaucrains 2002, Robert Chevillon
A heroic nose, exploding with ripe fruit, earth and spicy-richness. There is plenty of good, ripe Pinot fruit there and it is also noticeably Nuits in its slightly rustic character. The palate also has a bit of toughness, with some high acidity, but the incredibly ripe fruit balances this out perfectly. It is long, harmonious and full of grace. I have not had a heroic Burgundy that was quite so beautiful since I last had the 2001 Pommard Clos des Epeneaux from Comte Armand. This may be incredibly ripe and intense, but balance is the feeling one is left with as the very long finish subsides. The elements all work together very well, and it is in no way over-powering. A serious, but lovely, wine.

In its first flush of youth this is lovely. It probably will close down for several years, but I imagine it will re-emerge as a great wine of style and class.

Much better than the last bottle of white Burgundy I had to fight my way through.

Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru La Garenne 2002, Chateau de Puligny-Montrachet
The nose is very full, concentrated with a lot of floral character. There is something almost herbal about the nose. The palate is rich and concentrated, again really floral. Nice and ripe but in no way hot; restrained, if anything. The finish is really long, with plenty of acidity and minerality. This is a fine, balanced and concentrated bottle of interesting white Burgundy. Quite lovely, really.

... but someone usually hands me a glass of something good once I've got my breath back. Oh yes, oh yes, it is another offering from Morey St Denis, not my favourite producer there (which is Domaine Dujac), but as I have suggested in the past, a damned good producer.

Morey St. Denis Premier Cru Les Loups 1999, Domaine des Lambrays
Ah... Lovely, pretty fruit. Quite ripe, but it does not hold back in the 'lovely' department. It is a bit closed at the moment, so I shall not be opening my mag of 1999 Clos des Lambrays for some time. The tightness gives it a degree of restraint that this did not have when I last tried it, then it was during its opulent, expressive and hedonistic young stage. But the degree of loveliness here is not to be underestimated. No over-ripe HP Sauce character at all, this is pure, lovely, ripe Pinot from a Burgundy village that makes beautiful wine. This once again demonstrates the wonderfulness of elegant Burgundy, and I really love it. Shame it is only a half bottle.