2012 Red Burgundy:
Barthod, Chevillon, d'Angerville,
Fourrier, Rousseau & More
Today, I'm happy to present a list of 2012 Red Burgundy from some of the most sought after producers.
I've been really enjoying the 2012 Red Burgundies. There's a wonderful concentration, clarity and freshness to the wines. It's rare to find all three so present and in such harmony.
What I always return to is that everything feels amplified in 2012. Sadly, the main explanation for this is well known - yields were just brutal in 2012. It's not uncommon to hear about production being anywhere from 40-70% below normal.
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This has really made availability very ugly and has pushed prices northward. The only silver lining here is that many wines were really elevated in the vintage. Here I present a group of overachieving 2012s at really sharp prices.
Basically, if there was ever a vintage to shine the spotlight on frequently overlooked bottles, it's 2012. Many of them are the most successful examples that we've tasted in years. It's also where the value is.
For me, Chevillon's Chaignots dramatizes this. This bottling is the most slept on in his collection. Every vintage, I'm deeply impressed by it and wonder why more people haven't caught on. The 2012 Chaignots delivers an unusual amount of lifted mineral elegance.
Both d'Angerville's Volnay 1er Cru Frémiet and Pommard Combes Dessus are very successful in 2012. Frémiet sits across from Ducs, but with its delicacy and incisive precision always serves as a counterpoint to Ducs. In 2012, Frémiet has much more volume than it usually does while boasting its hallmark of a fine thread of minerality. The 2012 Chandon de Briailles Ile de Vergelesses shows a similar complexity and mineral driven fine-ness.
There's too much to cover in this space, but I'm hoping that Barthod, Fourrier and Rousseau will speak for themselves. As usual with wines like this, we don't have all that much. Please give us your ideal order and we'll do our best.
To order, reply to offers@crushwineco.com or call the store at (212) 980-9463.
Ian McFadden
Director, Fine & Rare Wine
Crush Wine & Spirits
2012 Red Burgundy
Burghound: "A spicy nose offers a subtle step up in aromatic elegance with its very fresh nose of black raspberry and soft earth hints. There is good verve and detail to the lightly mineral-inflected medium weight flavors that possess good volume and phenolic maturity of the structural elements, all wrapped in a tight and moderately austere finish."
Burghound: "A cool and pure nose of red currant, earth and a hint of spice introduces detailed, energetic and delicious middle weight flavors that display excellent depth and length in the context of the appellation. Lovely stuff."
Burghound: "Here the moderately expressive nose is both more complex and more deeply pitched with more obvious earth, humus and underbrush tones to the dark currant and soft floral aromas. Here too there is very fine detail and even more minerality present on the medium-bodied flavors that offer fine depth and length on the slightly more firmly structured finale."