I tried this wine at my first Decanter magazine panel tasting years ago. I remember it being very good, but hellishly oaky.

Chablis Grand Cru les Preuses 1996, William Fevre
Nutty, honeyed nose, plenty of fruit, round and mature. It has a good creamy minerality to it. There is a bit of woody vanilla, but not as much as I recall from years ago. It has integrated nicely. The palate has quite high acidity, but plenty of fruit and reasonable length. It is dense and weighty, but kept lively by the minerality and acidity. It is really quite good and one of the best 1996 Burgundy/Chablis wines I have had. Still in very good condition the day after I popped it.

I was looking at the distribution of grape varieties in my wine collection:

It pleases me very much that I have more Mourvèdre than Chardonnay, albeit by a single bottle. Syrah is a bit high, but Riesling and Pinot Noir hold the top spots, as well they should. Nebbiolo seems high and Chenin Blanc seems far too low.

The owner of the wonderful food blog Chez Pim has linked to my rant about the greatness of Burgundy. I return the favour with a link to her site. She is clearly more of a serious blogger than me, or has more money to spend on food than I do on wine.

This was quite disappointing, not up to the required standard for here.

Cornas 1997, Clape
A nice nose of dark fruit and earth, but very dirty and bretty. The palate is angular and really filthy. Incredible levels of brett in this wine, it is very dirty indeed. There is not much else on the palate, hardly any fruit, and not much length. The nose promised some goodies, but the box was just empty. Very disappointing.

I just felt in need of beauty tonight.

Riesling Brauneberger-Juffer Sonnenuhr Auslese Goldkapsel Fuder 9 1994, Fritz Haag
A beautiful nose of botrytis, slate and petrol. The nose is quite developed. The palate has really quite a lot of acidity, but is balanced by plenty of ripeness and fruit. It is very long and speaks of where it was grown. A seriously lovely wine.

Riesling Cuvée Frédéric-Emile 1990, Trimbach
This started off being surprisingly closed. However, it opened up to reveal plenty of limy fruit on the nose along with a creamy minerality. The palate was very long and complex, with austere lime fruit, earthy richness and an almost toasty finish. Very good, once it had opened up.

A nice bottle of wine last night, once again balance was key to its pleasure.

Côte-Rôtie Les Grandes Places 1997, Domaine Clusel-Roch
A ripe nose of dark fruit and some meat. It is quite ripe and earthy, but by no means over-ripe. It has a moderate alcohol content (claimed 12%). The nose is concentrated and round. The palate shows similar concentration and has a very round, complete finish. There is lots of ripe fruit, and it has a pleasing smoky bacon maturity to it. Nice and long, with a good tannic structure, and very well balanced. A very nice wine.

At the same time we opened the basic Clusel-Roch 1997. It was much lighter bodied, with higher acidity and a slightly raw edge to the tannins. This settled down with half an hour in the decanter, but the balance and concentration of the Grandes Places was much more pronounced. It was a good wine, but the Grandes Places was far more lovely and serious. Oddly, it also needed less decanting time.

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.