The Great 2015 Burgundy Arrival

While I consider myself more of a serious fanboy for clean, crisp, and mineral-driven white Burgundy, there was no denying the fleshiness, ripeness, and simple deliciousness of the 2015 reds during our trip to the Côte d'Or this past Spring. We had heard the rumors, read the reports, and spoken with many a winemaker, but it wasn't until about our fourth appointment that the reality began to hit home. 2015 in Burgundian pinot noir is an absolute dream for wine drinkers like myself who, while happy to wait a few years before opening a bottle, aren't huge collectors and don't necessarily have the space for storage. That's not to say the 2015 reds won't age beautifully—because they will! It's just to point out that almost everything I've tasted from the heralded vintage is showing wonderfully already. There's nothing worse than walking a customer through the Burgundy aisle, pointing out a few recommendations, and telling them: "Yeah, maybe drink that one in 2020." It's the ultimate deflator. Most of our customers want wines to drink soon—like tonight! 

The other issue with recommending wines that aren't quite ready to be opened is how those bottles are ultimately interpreted by our customers. If someone takes home a tannic, acidic, and rather tart bottle of Côte de Beaune and thinks that young, rather robust bottle speaks for the whole of Burgundy, that's one more customer we've potentially lost for the department. Part of the reason I originally wanted to be involved with the Burgundy team here at K&L was because I felt our customers needed a bit of curation; someone to help them navigate the shelf and point out what was ready to drink and what wasn't. The great part about 2015 is that—while you might want to wait on some of the grand cru expressions—you can pretty much drink everything now and the wines will taste fantastic. Example number one? The recent arrival of 2015 Giboulot and Domaine Bart reds that just hit our warehouse this week. While we don't have all our tasting notes on the website yet and I plan to go into more detail here at OTL later on, you can feel comfortable buying any of these expressions today, popping the cork tonight, and having yourself a little Bourgogne rouge party. The Giboulet wines in particular are juicy and ripe on the palate, oozing with cassis fruit, blackberries, and baking spices. The 2015 Savigny-lès-Beanue 1er Cru "Aux Gravains" (perhaps my favorite of the bunch) is an absolute stunner, with a huge and expressive nose of fruit and spice, and a lush, lively, and long finish. 

Trey, Alex, and I all wanted to go deep this year, as we though across the board the 2015 vintage represented one of the best we've tasted in the past decade—right there with 2005. Watch the OTL blog moving forward as we continue to showcase our new arrivals, breaking down the wines one-by-one as they hit the docks.

It should be quite an exciting summer for Burgundy fans at K&L.

-David Driscoll

David Driscoll