Today I drove over to La Petite Montagne to visit Frédérique and Hughes in the village of Sacy. They own 15 acres of vineyard in this village as well as 20 acres in the villages of Chigny-les-Roses, Rilly-la-Montagne, and Ludes. They split their production between Sacy vines, which include the historic Jany Poret name, and the rest, which are just called Duménil to respect the two separate families that became one when they married. All their wines are entirely 1er Cru, stainless-steel-fermented, and of exceptional quality. They have been members of the association “Special Club” since 2010, and, like all the others in this group, are in the top echelon of grower Champagne.
One of the highlights of any trip to Champagne for me is a stop to see my old friend Quentin Paillard in Bouzy. We have been working together for more than a decade, and, in that time, he and his brother Anotine have taken this house to the top level of grower Champagne. Their goal is simple—to make terroir-driven Champagne from their old, massal-selected vines in Bouzy. This cru is renowned in Champagne for its powerful Pinot Noir that, at its best, does not lose its refreshing cut and clean minerality. In Quentin and Antoine’s hands, this cru is truly at its best.
It is bottling season for a lot of producers in Champagne, and when I went to visit Pierre Gonet, who makes Pierre Mineral Champagne, he was in the middle of the job…
It is great to be back on the road in Champagne—the weather here has been properly hot (even warmer than in California), and, just like us, they have not had enough rain this year. The vineyards are going crazy, and the growers are having a hard time keeping up with their precociousness. Today I was visiting producers on the Mountain of Reims and was very impressed with one wine in particular, the 2013 Jean Lallement et Fils Brut.
Southern Hemisphere wines are more exciting than ever, and K&L Buyer Thomas Smith has assembled a tour de force of the best on our shelves. Whether you’re looking for exquisite cool-climate Pinot, skin-contact summer sippers, or the most exciting producer to come out of South Africa, Thomas has got you covered.
I’ll cut straight to the chase. The 2021 Bordeaux vintage is exponentially superior to what the narrative implied in the weeks and months leading up to En Primeur week. And, as of today, there’s still hope that first-tranche pricing will be grounded and we’ll have a meaningful futures campaign on our hands.
Today's Newsletter takes us on a multi-stop jaunt through Burgundy with intrepid K&L buyer Alex Pross. Perhaps more than any other region in France, Burgundy has been subject to the viccissitudes of economics and Mother Nature the past few years, so an already tight market has gotten even tighter. But luckily for us, in addition to some indefatigable reference-point producers, Alex keeps a deep stable of top-tier direct-import hidden gems that bring us both exceptional value and impeccable class.
I just returned from the most over-the-top wine trip of my life—and it wasn’t even to a wine-producing country! Champagne Krug invited me, along with about 80 of their top ambassade from around the world, on a two day “Highlands Quest”—filled with more great Krug than anyone has a right to drink in a lifetime. I still don’t think it has all sunk in…
We’re excited to find gorgeous wines in 2021 that are worthy of many collectors’ attention, but the fact remains that this is a unique vintage that any collector should consider with care. It is a vintage where the best vignerons toiled endlessly to craft something that vastly outperformed expectations. We often adore those vintages at K&L, where sneaky-good finds sometimes outshine the more obvious picks.
A few years back, I mused about the lingering question that Clyde would often ask of châteaux representatives, sometimes up front, sometimes after a sip—“so…what’s the price?” It is a good question, something that is perhaps more apropos than ever. But it feels more poignant now for a much different reason. My last trip with Clyde would have been back in 2019, when it looked like “up” was the only direction for a 2018 vintage that provided a lot of upside, but existed in a world that seems so far away from today. Now inflation, a pandemic, and supply chain issues put an immense amount of pressure on every part of the equation, and no one knows where prices will go.
Today was the first major tasting day in Bordeaux for the K&L team, and it provided the kind of perspective that adds so much value to this kind of trip. Although Merlot was a big problem in the Right Bank for the ’21s due to mildew and frost, there is a huge variation in how these calamities affected any given winery… it hardly begins to tell the story.
