Wednesday Wines – Episode 144 – 2021s from Edouard Delaunay
As a post scriptum to my Members-only 2021 Burgundy En Primeur notes, which you can read on this website under the Taste banner, the kind folks at Edouard Delaunay sent me a collection of their wines, and here are my favourites, including one coveted QP wine. The pricing stated is a guesstimate from France, including duty and VAT – in effect, a retail price. I do not have any more details regarding potential sales channels.
There is a lot more detail on my thoughts on the vintage in the main part of my En Primeur Report.
Whites
2021 Bourgogne Blanc, Côte d’Or £30.20
Tangy and crisp, with plenty of energy and grip on the finish, this looks quite dear for a BB, but it is clearly made from superb fruit and carefully-judged oak. A cunning wine in a challenging vintage, this might prove to be a clever purchase in a year or two. 17/20
2021 Meursault, Le Village £77.66
Green, bright and lemony, with the merest touch of resin on the finish, this is a more pumped-up style of white wine than the BB above. For twice the price tag, I would stick to the previous wine, but there is undoubtedly a larger framework here, and it will look enticing early in its life. 17/20
2021 Puligny-Montrachet, Le Village £85.44
Much stricter than the other whites in the collection, this is a wine with admirable grandeur, accuracy, and tension, and while it is closed now, it bodes well for the future. The trick here is to hang on while watching the finish closely. Be sure to drink it before the grippiness subsides and while the fruit is still fresh and ripe, and you will adore the results. 17.5+/20
Reds
2021 Marsannay, En Combereau £37.10
I have tasted a lot of Marsannay in this vintage, and most seem too hard and raw for my taste. By contrast, this is a fruit-driven style, and it manages to maintain an accurate postcode while slowing off a juicy Pinot perfume and decent amplitude of flavour. “A bottle of the Bourgogne Blanc and an En Combereau, please!” I can hear this order in Bistros up and down the Côte in a year or two! 17/20 QP
2021 Nuits-Saint-Georges, Le Village £51.77
Powerful, expressive, and surprisingly full and smooth, the only thing holding this wine back is the touch of greenness buried in the core. Clearly, it is not optimally ripe, but this is still a fabulously hearty wine with detail and honesty. In the context of the vintage, the value for money looks fair. 17.5/20
2021 Nuits-Saint-Georges, 1er Cru Aux Argillas £77.66
More structured and detailed than Le Village, this is a wine worth trading up to, but at nearly on £80, this looks dear in 2021. It is certainly more backward, but there is refinement here, and while the oak is fairly dominant at the moment, it will be worth the wait. 17.5+/20
2021 Morey-Saint-Denis, 1er Cru Les Millandes £103.55
It is worrying just how expensive some villages and their prized vineyards have become. 2021 is not a collector’s vintage, as you will see from my overall Report, but there are occasional wines that impress, and this is why it is worth studying every bottle forensically. Les Millandes is undoubtedly a success for Delaunay, but what a shame it is not 2/3 of the price because it would have earned a ‘QP’ in an instant! With lovely pure fruit and a smooth and dry finish, some hidden chapters of flavour are yet to emerge fully here. A true sense of this mighty village will echo throughout this experience in the not-too-distant future because this is a carefully assembled wine with a relatively forward air. 18/20
2021 Pommard, 1er Cru Les Chaponnières £77.66
Surprisingly deep and with more overt muscle than Les Millandes, Les Chaponnières shows impressive density and succulence alongside a thrilling edge of wildness and flair. Structured, fairly strong, and with hard buttresses of tannin on the finish, this needs a good five years before you take a look, but it will reward patience, given its obvious fruit quality. 18+/20
