I used to go to dinner at a friend’s house and before the meal we would do a blind tasting.
Every time, It would either be a bottle of Macon or Guy Roulot’s Bourgogne Blanc. Whichever it was, it was always delicious, and my friend who was working for John Armit clearly knew what he was doing, the Bourgogne Blanc cost scarcely more than the Macon Village.
Unfortunately, those days are gone now and Jean-Marc Roulot is now very much a member of the ‘in-crowd’. When I mentioned to Jean-Marc that his Bourgogne Blanc was now circa £60 with all taxes paid in the UK, he looked rather downcast. He certainly hasn’t changed his pricing much.
But with this new-fame and pricing have come murmurs that his wines wear more of a vinification signature then a terroir one. That they are picked too early, and that they don’t age very well.
So, it was a great opportunity to try a wide range of vintages, spend an absolute bloody fortune, and talk to the man himself at Michael Sager’s Paradise Row restaurant last Sunday.
1990 Meursault Vireuils
Attractive but fading a bit. Bruised apple, slightly tropical. Very nice complexity, but probably should have been drunk 5 years or so ago.
1996 Meursault 1er Perrieres
The wine of the evening I think – In a wonderful place maturity wise. Very mineral inflected. No hurry to drink.
2001 Meursault 1er Perrieres
Very good, but perhaps lacking the maturity and overall length of the 96
2007 Meursault Tillets
Probably one of the wines we caught most at its peak. Very, very good.
2009 Meursault 1er Perrieres
A great wine for sure, but not one that sparked the fireworks you might expect. A touch tropical, nice length, but maybe caught a bit between youth and maturity.
2010 Monthelie Blanc
Not quite right, developing much quicker than you would expect.
Perhaps a bad bottle.
2010 Bourgogne Blanc
Very youthful and displaying the classic Roulot style.
2013 Meursault Tessons Clos de Mon Plasir
Showing really well, a sort of weightless style, really nice minerality and really very drinkable.
2014 Meursault 1er Perrieres
So tightly coiled, I’m not sure why this was poured to be honest. But will be a great wine. In passing, JM told us that his favourite vintages were 2007, 2014 and 1996.
There is clearly a house style at Roulot, and one that shares similarities with producers like PYCM and Henri Boillot. There is that green-apple, high-extract and strong sense of minerality that make the wines quite identifiable. With age the character moves into the background a little. But how much you like the wines I suppose depends on how much you like that style.
He’s doing his thing and like the wines or not, making wines as good as this is not just a matter of picking early. I think he gets unfairly maligned as if that’s all you need to do to make this style of wine. It’s not that easy unfortunately.
I also think that his wines are more compressed quality wise then some other producers. By that I mean, the difference between his entry level Bourgogne and his top wine, Perrieres, is relatively less then, say Leflaive (although they have grand crus) So – for me, the value lies in the Meursault village and the village lieux-dits.
From this tasting, we found the wines certainly do age well, or at least the ones we tried. And they put on beautiful extra complexity.
I feel for Jean-Marc. He was telling me how he wanted to print his ex-cellar prices on the bottles. He doesn’t want his Bourgogne Blanc to sell at £60 – Not when he’s releasing it at about 12 Euros. His wish is for the wines to be drunk and shared at fair prices, not traded and turned into status symbols, and you can sense his unease about where the market is placing his wines.
He gets the downside – people say his wines are too expensive, but none of the upside of making more money.
I really like the man, there is a real sense of honesty that comes through when you talk to him. He seems self-aware enough to be sanguine about his journey into the group of ‘star’ producers of Meursault. It ain’t always blessed.