As wine bars go, The Wine Library is a good one. A 19th century cellar in Tower Hill, it pays no attention to trends, in either décor or drinking styles; no sign of Enomatic wine dispensers here. This bar has traditional drinking booths, allowing some privacy and enabling conversation to take place at a comfortable volume. The lighting level wouldn’t do for the MW tasting exam, but in all other drinking situations, low wattage is very welcome.
A visit earlier this week, when the weather was milder, made it feel like a white wine sort of day. Despite the hundreds of bottles to choose from, I still somehow managed to end up in the Burgundy section, where I almost missed the bottle of Bourgogne “Chaumes des Perrières” in favour of a Pouilly-Fuissé.
Chaumes des Perrières falls outside protected classification, due to some historic viticultural practices that upset the neighbours. At under £40, it is actually a declassified Meursault, making it a gem of a bottle and a rare find. In 1975, Raymond Dupont-Fahn’s grandfather took pity on his young vines and added a layer of topsoil, taking it from the bottom of the vineyard to the top, in order to help establish his planting. He had been granted permission by the INAO to do this, but other producers nearby raised a petition, and the whole plot was subsequently downgraded from Meursault to Bourgogne. Finding a declassified wine from a revered producer and favourable site on the Côte de Beaune is surely the holy grail for Burgundy seekers, unless they have very deep pockets, as year-on-year prices increase due to the untrammelled world demand for wines from the region. It is hard to imagine how one would go about making enquiries for declassified Meursault in the Côte de Beaune, but the image of flying pigs springs to mind. Wine of this quality and pedigree that sells for the price of generic Bourgogne must surely be a closely guarded secret, and for those wine importers who can get hold of it, a wet dream.
There are no grand crus in Meursault, but the commune has 18 premier crus and producer names that command respect the world over. The Dupont-Fahn plot has vines of 40 years plus, and until the late 1970s, the wines were entitled to be sold as Meursault, possibly even with ‘1er Cru Dos d’Ane’ status, sitting as it does just to the south of Sous le Dos d’Ane and a mere 50 metres above the Perrières vines of the fabled wine producer, Coche-Dury. Following the INAO’s decision to declassify the wine, Grandpa Dupont-Fahn must have had some regrets about moving that soil up the slope.
For the drinkers in the library booth that day, this bottle proved to be a great discovery. With its slightly greenish hues (a 2020, so still young), it is taut and linear, with pronounced aromas of lime zest, grapefruit and greengage. There is evidence of malolactic fermentation and some restrained oak, and a lingering finish. Unusually, the bottle has a wax capsule, which may be in an effort to reduce the risk of premox, which is well known to have a disproportionate effect on white Burgundies. Not a knock-out ‘Meursault’, but then it wasn’t a Meursault - or was it?
This wine has been a fascinating discovery and a reminder, should one be necessary, that the study of Burgundian parcels, climats, neighbourly disputes and appellation politics are complicated, and even intriguing. A bottle of Meursault, in all but name, retailing for under £40, can be mine for less than my favourite bottle of Bourgogne Aligoté. Who would have thought it?