Introduction
After I orchestrated a full 2004 grower bottled Montrachet horizontal last year @naradmuni followed up with this crazy event that featured 20 Chevalier Montrachets and 5 Montrachets, all from the 2004 vintage. For those in the know, just the sourcing effort that went into this is of mindnumbing proportions. This even involved asking friendly Burgundy domaines to trade their own bottles to get a loose bottle of another producer that doesn’t do more than half a barrel a year (!). All wines were served completely blind in neutral vessels (which is the only way) and 12 people voted blind.
Flight 1: Bize / Ramonet / Chartron / Prieur + Prieur Montrachet
This was the first of five flights of five wines which each contained four Chevalier Montrachets and one Montrachet, all from 2004.
1st place: Ramonet Chevalier 2004 (7x voted 1st, 4x 2nd). Lime, mint, gingery spice, very Puligny-esque. Young and vibrant.
2nd place (4x 1st, 3x 2nd): Jean Chartron Clos des Chevaliers 2004. Touch of reduction, well judged classy oak, great length and a textbook Chevalier linear acid spine. My WOTF by a whisker over Ramonet but those two wines were for me a significant step up compared to the the others.
3rd place: Jacques Prieur Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (1x voted 1st, 3x 2nd). A decadent and rich Chevy with ripe yellow and orange fruit. Picked too late for my liking, but that seems to be the house style. Always the better wine compared to his Montrachet as there is balancing acidity to be found here.
4th place: Simon Bize Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (2x voted 2nd). Clean and transparent citrus and white stone fruits without any apparent oak. Showing young with a slightlu biting acidity and some leanness on the midpalate. I very much prefer this early picking style compared to Prieur.
5th. Jacques Prieur Montrachet 2004 (zero votes). My third encounter with this wine and it always shows advanced and overripe. Notes of sugarcane, baked apple, pineapple tart, honey coated almonds that lead into an alcoholic finish with insufficient acidity. Truly a poor effort for such a grand terroir. And it’s not just the late picking as DRC does the same and their wine is infinitely better.
Five out of twelve participants correctly picked out the Prieur Montrachet as the outlier and five others thought it was Prieur’s Chevalier Montrachet. Producer matters...
Flight 2: The Colins
A rare sight of all 2004 Chevalier expressions by the various Colin family branches. With a PYCM Montrachet threw in for good measure. Obviously...
1st place: Marc Colin Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (9x voted 1st, 2x 2nd). Overwhelming favourite to which I completely agree. Translucent nose with spiced pear, acacia and ginger followed by a dense and vibrant mid-palate and huge length. I mistook it for a Montrachet, a very good one that is. This was from the time that Pierre-Yves was still making the wines and the style is a nice hybrid between oldschool Marc Colin and his own estate.
2nd place: Colin Deléger Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (3x voted 1st, 5x 2nd). Rock solid with an intriguing nose of aloe vera, cinnamon and ripe citrus fruits. Driven by a powerful and precise acid line: très Chevalier.
3rd place: PYCM - Montrachet 2004 (6x voted 2nd). Quite a bit of winemaking going on here with generous oak, dairy notes and a lime juice fruit profile. Somewhat showy and monolithic but it does leave an impression.
Tied 4th place: PYCM - Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (no votes). Similar to the Montrachet there was a lot of oak and lees influence with a thick ripe yellow fruit profile. Surprisingly richer and less precise than the Montrachet, although in the négoce world anything is possible.
Tied 4th place: Philippe Colin Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (no votes). A bit sharp, lean and unbalanced, not what you would expect from a Chevalier. Not sure if it was a fully representative bottle.
Participants were also asked to identify the Montrachet and only one out of twelve got that correct whereas seven people thought PYCM’s Chevy was a Monty.
Flight 3: The negos
This nego flight was perfectly assembled @naradmuni and included the definitive Bouchard comparison between Chevalier, Chevalier La Cabotte and Montrachet. The outcome was surprising and only possible in a blind setting.
1st place: Bouchard Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (8x voted 1st, 3x 2nd). Yes, the straight Chevy sweeping the table. Brilliant cool and understated white fruit expression with lilies and lime juice. Very pure and an excellent data point to proof that ‘less is more’ with regards to winemaking interventions. It also screamed plot typicity as noone mistook it for a Montrachet. Also interesting to note this is one of the cheapest Chevaliers out there.
2nd place Louis Jadot - Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (3x voted 1st, 4x 2nd). Not sure why this was so highly rated as it was clearly advanced with baked appled and molasses flavours. Oldschool opulent expression with sweet overripe fruits, generous oak and strong leesy and dairy notes. Not much finesse to be found here.
3rd place: Bouchard Montrachet (4x voted 2nd). Interesting and complex wine that marries slightly overripe orange fruits, candied ginger and hazelnuts with an almost biting acidity. I feel a few years of cellaring might soften the finish.
4th place: Bouchard Chevalier La Cabotte 2004 (1x voted 1st, 1x 2nd). Unusual for this wine to be outclassed but it was a bit monolithic with its slightly overripe orange fruit profile. I must say that (with the exception of the 2002) I found the Cabotte expressions better from 2007 onwards.
5th place: Louis Latour Chevalier Les Demoiselles 2004. No surprise here: advanced cereal notes, overripe, botrytis and insufficient acidity. Hope this estate will ever come back to their old level.
Flight 4: The start of the madness
This is where things got even more serious with a clear step up in quality and consistency. I truly struggled to pick favourites here as the qualitative differences were tiny.
1st place: Jean-Marc Pillot Chevalier Montrachet 2004. A bit of a unicorn from a tiny plot. Classy and subtle oak giving a light vanilla and baking spice complexity. Very powerful palate with lemon and lime coated white peaches and pears. Impressive length too.
2nd place: Vincent Girardin Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (4x voted 1st, 2x 2nd). Textbook Chevalier that was bursting with energy, drive and precision. Honeyed calamansi limes with stony minerals resulted in a superb balance of sweet, sour and salty notes. I am not surprised about the outcome as Girardin’s Chevalier is a consistent bright star in his range.
3rd place: Sauzet Chevalier Montrachet (5x voted 2nd). The richer style of Sauzet lends itself well to cooler vintages. I actually think the vineyard character overtakes the producer style here. Not the typical generous Sauzet spiced pineapple expression but more linear with a distinctly cooler fruit profile of nectarine and Asian pear. Some white pepper on the textbook acid-driven finish. Truly very good and drinking at peak.
4th place: Sauzet Montrachet 2004 (3x voted 2nd). Distinctly riper than the Chevy (possibly explained by the must sourced from Thenard’s Chassagne-side montrachet plot). Yellow pear and red apple, cinnamon, ginger and cumin. A touch less vibrant than the Chevy but no complaints here as the wine had good tension with more edges than curves.
5th place: Chateau de Puligny Montrachet 2004 (2x voted 2nd). Another super rare wine which was not highly regarded by most but I was intrigued. It was a complete outlier and 10 out of 12 people (including myself) mistook it for a Montrachet. I could barely believe it was a 2004 as it showed tropical fruits yet without any overripeness. Not the most complex nor typical but certainly an interesting wine offering a very different expression.
Flight 5: The endgame
A single picture might say more than a thousand words…
1st place: D’Auvenay Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (9x voted 1st).
Madame’s undisputable white Magnum Opus. Only the second time I was lucky enough to try her Chevy and these are experiences to take with you. Similar to any d’Auvenay white there is a strong producer signature with a haunting and slightly reductive nose full of smoke, garam masala, flint, ginger, white pepper and ultra high toned citrus and floral notes. The massive intensity carries forward on a palate that is best imagined as the essence of pomelo skin, yuzu, ginger and wet rocks combined. Despite it being a 2004 there was no notion of evolution and it felt like this wine is not impacted by something as mundane as the passage of time... Although completely unique it somehow reminded me of Krug’s Clos du Mesnil 1996 that shows an equal mindnumbing tension with ripeness and acidity pushed to near explosive levels. One might disagree but I think wines like these are actually best enjoyed now as you don’t want the edges to soften.
2nd place: Leflaive Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (1x voted 1st, 6x 2nd). Huge wine that almost wants me to pull out terms like dry extract... which I won’t. A wine with everything in spades: ripe yellow peach, yellow pears, honey, toasty oak, barrel spice and just enough acid to cut through the unctuous body. Impressive wine but a bit short of the best Leflaive Chevy expressions in terms of precision and minerality. But another proofpoint that despite the undisputable issues that Leflaive faced in the 2000s, their Chevalier seems to be the least affected. May be less (over)worked in the winery?
3rd place: Henri Boillot Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (1x voted 1st, 4x 2nd). This was actually my personal second favourite this flight (and the night!). Henri Boillot prefers the Chevy to his Monty. I would agree and wonder where he sources the must from as I can’t quite find this quality level elsewhere. Très Puligny with tons of energy, minerality, cool white nectarines, white flowers, edges, angles, corners and an amazing fraicheur of lemon, lime and quinine (think tonic water bitterness). Painlessly intense and suspenseful. Astoundingly brilliant wine, one that stops all conversation. Puligny first. Period. End of sentence.
4th place: Henri Boillot Montrachet (1x voted 1st, 2x 2nd). A touch rounder, riper with yellow as opposed to white fruits with candied ginger. A true oily seamlessness on the palate which made me guess this to be a Montrachet. I think in any normal tasting strong candidate for WOTN but this was everything but a normal tasting or flight.
5th place: Michel Niellon Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (no votes). A true pity as I have witnessed the brilliance of Niellon Chevy and when it’s on song it is really second to none. Unfortunately this bottle was cleary advanced and tired, something I witness too often for their wines between 1996 and 2005.
Conclusion
WOTN: D’Auvenay Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (8x voted 1st). Recommendable you might ask? Only if one feels like dropping 5K USD for a bottle I’d pick this over the very few peers in this category: the good, atypical yet massively overpriced DRC Montrachet and the Leflaive Montrachet on which one better doesn’t waste too much money or words. Factoring in any wider notion of value for money I favour Ramonet Montrachet at one fifth of the price.
2nd place: Jean-Marc Pillot Chevalier Montrachet 2004 (3x voted 1st). Recommended? Yes, simple as that. Finding a botte is less simple though.
3rd place: Henri Boillot Chevalier Montrachet 2004. Recommended? Yes! Typically I prefer Boillot’s domaine over the negoce bottlings but the vineyard quality seems to prevail.
Having organized a full grower-bottled 2004 Montrachet tasting last year, this would be my virtual top 5 across the two tastings.
1. D’Auvenay Chevalier Montrachet 2004
2. Drouhin Marquis de Laguiche Montrachet 2004
3. Comte Lafon Montrachet 2004
4. DRC Montrachet 2004
5. Henri Boillot Chevalier Montrachet 200
A final observation is that there are no Montrachets in the top 3 and in four out of five flights (except for PYCM) the Chevalier of the same producer was preferred to the Montrachet. The Chevalier vs Montrachet discussion has many angles and nuances to it and I want to write a book on this topic one day. From the same perspective it’s also interesting to note that all the highflyers of the Montrachet tasting do not have a Chevalier. So one day there will be a blind taste-off between the winners of both tastings. As many of the 2004s still benefit from some additional aging this might be something for 2024… or 2029.