Elden Wine

Based in Burgundy and specializing in small-production wines little known outside of France. Our services include:

• Elden Selections, a twice-yearly newsletter keeping you up-to-date with the complex world of Burgundy.
• Personal Importation We can help you become the importer.
• The Burgundy Wine Institute, in collaboration with the BIVB Ecole des Vins, is a glass-in-hand exploration of the Burgundy vineyards.
• Past Issues of ‘Elden Selections’ back to 1996. With a Search function.
• Winemaker Profiles ‘Get to Know the Growers’.
• Ask the Winemakers We can put you in touch with the Producers… just ask!
• Tasting Notes from our regular cellar and in-house tastings.
• Elden France Burgundy Wine Tours and special events in Paris
• At Home in Burgundy What’s great wine without great food? Ellie’s book out now!
• Foodstuff  It’s a lifestyle thing….
  

If you would like to receive a paper copy of Elden Selections, just send your mailing address to eldenwine@gmail.com

If you would like to receive the password to access protected areas of this site, get in touch via
eldenwine@gmail.com

And be sure to look for Ellie’s new book, At Home in Burgundy by Eleanor Garvin
Available now on amazon.com

And for more about our life here At Home in Burgundy see
Foodstuff

Fall 2009

AT HOME IN BURGUNDY
Printable PDF Version

As we prepare to head off to Lake Como for our Fall 2009 Papillon tours, Ellie and I look back on this passing Burgundian summer and wonder.  While the big world out there seems chopped and changed, here the rhythm is steady and familiar.  The wheat harvest is coming in, abundant under sunny skies.  The charollais make their rounds in the fields, stopping by our place every night at 6.  Our vegetable garden is heaving, and we are eating the only Silver Queen in Burgundy!  And of course the vineyards are loving it: long, cool days; just enough rain; nothing drastic. ‘Prometteur’, the winemakers are saying.  It’s been a model summer.  But it’s also been an active summer.  The biggest news is that, at long last, Ellie’s cookbook will be published.  ‘At Home in Burgundy–The Papillon Recipes’ by Eleanor Garvin should be on sale on Amazon soon after this issue of ‘Selections’ reaches you.  We’ve also had quite a few wine visitors staying with us since the beginning of summer.  This gave us a chance to taste with a wide range of producers, new and known, and thus to have a good clear picture of what the past two vintages have given us.  So we take this opportunity to bring your one of our irregularly-scheduled vintage reports.  Finally, we want to share a little local culture. Back in April the Domaine Rapet presented a ‘retrospective’ of the career of Roland Rapet with a tasting of Corton Grand Cru going back to 1949.  So while we are thinking about Italy, the cuisine of the Lombardian lakes and the Nebbiolo of the Valtellina, it’s hard to interrupt a perfect summer here in the heart of Burgundy.

The reason that we’re so thrilled with our perfect summer is that we haven’t really had a summer here at all for the past two years.  Both 2007 and 2008 were dismal wet and gray. For the winemakers, both years held moments of high anxiety, near despair and eventually salvation.  The results in the bottle are surprisingly good considering, and astonishingly similar.  Despite wildly different growing seasons, both years produced characteristic Burgundy, more characteristic perhaps than any other vintage in the past ten years. This deserves a closer look for two reasons.  The first is that the over-all quality of vineyard work in Burgundy is improving dramatically.  Yield control, judicious use of fungicides, careful sorting at harvest time all contribute to the quality of the fruit that eventually gets fermented. Secondly, both Pinot Noir and Chardonnay like to come to maturity slowly.  Neither shows its true self in a hot climate. A quick review of the weather conditions in the two vintages will give you some idea of the role each of these factors played in the end

2007 was a most curious year.  After a dry mild winter, summer came in April with four sunny weeks. Flowering took place three weeks early. Then the rest of the summer was rotten. Those who did not assiduously follow their treatments had a real mess on their hands.  Even the best farmers were in trouble.  When we left for Italy at the end of August, the Burgundy wine world was in mourning.  After three months of really wet conditions, the vines were ripe….ripe for mildew and rot.  But because the temperatures remained cool, the spread of rot was slowed.  Lack of sun let the grapes develop thick skins, which in the end resisted splitting. Then came the ‘miracle’: the north wind blew in and the sun returned for two months of glorious autumnal weather, allowing the crop to dry out and ripen slowly.  The harvest took place early (a hundred days after the precocious flowering), but under ideal conditions. The ‘bad’ growers had to pick, for fear of rot; the ‘good’ producers would wait for phenolic maturity.  The grapes needed careful sorting before they could be vatted; but overall, for those who did their vineyard work, the harvest was safe and sound.

2008 was another summer to forget.  Not so bleak as 2007, but dreary nonetheless.  And worse, the rot took hold.  Spring and early summer were wet and miserable.  Flowering was late and erratic, meaning that the harvest would be late and erratic.  July was normal: sunny and warm, relatively dry. More rain in August though slowed maturity.  Worse, the weather turned stormy and there was considerable hail damage.  The damaged grapes were prone to oidium and rot as the wet weather continued.  Once again, going into September, the mood in the cellars was somber.  Then, in a repeat of the ‘miracle of 07’, summer returned with the north wind.  The rain let up, the sun shone; the vineyards dried out and the rot dried up. The damage had already been done however, and an already small crop was further diminished on the sorting tables. There is an element of luck in any successful 08 Burgundy: hail strikes indiscriminately. But once again, those who did not do the vineyard work were penalized.  Many growers did not even bother to harvest, the rot was so rampant.  There is much disagreement about the quality of these two vintages.  Those who want every year to be 2005 will never understand Burgundy.  For our part, 2007 is perhaps the most ‘Burgundian’ vintage in memory.  Good producers got the phenolic maturity needed to express ‘terroir’, and at the same time were able to keep the lacy finesse that is characteristic of fine Burgundy.  Reds show as well as whites, but as always, you have to know who made the wine.  2008 is still up in the air.  It was certainly a surprisingly good year for whites; like the 07s but fatter.  It’s the reds that may cause concern.  Only the most severe sorting (some say they ditched half the crop) will keep the taste of ‘botrytis’ out of the bottle.  But more and more producers see that quality is their trump card, and have been able to make Burgundy as it should be made: with hard work and

CELEBRATING RAPET PERE ET

When the invitation came through the mail slot last April, Ellie and I could hardly believe our luck.  The Domaine Rapet Pere et Fils, arguably our most prestigious producer, were staging a Prestige Tasting of Grand Cru Corton going back to the 1949 vintage.  It was, in effect, a retrospective of the winemaking career of Roland Rapet (the ‘pere’ in ‘Pere et Fils’).  We figured it was going to be a media event, with serious journalists and nobby socialites.  But in true Burgundian style, the Rapets put on a family celebration and invited their friends.  We came prepared to take studious notes and photos, but ended up just joining in the fun and listening to a lifetime of stories.  The tasting, though invitation only, was run like an open-house; it took place over two days, and you arrived when you wanted.  Vincent was there at the cuverie door, handing out programs and glasses.  His young son nervously poured a mise-en-bouche glass of Aligoté while folks said hello and looked over the list of things to come. We tasted through the domain’s 07 whites (the three Pernand 1er Crus, the new Beaune 1er Cru ‘Bressandes’ and of course the Corton-Charlemagne), and rounded out this very hospitable welcome with a little flight of Corton-Charlemagne in 03, 96 and 83.  The group then moved down the street to the center of the village and the oldest cellar in the domain.  The rooms were set up by decade, the 2000s, the 1990s, 80s, 70s; the stands were looked after by the Rapet family and the folks who work with Vincent. There’s this thing in Burgundy about vintages that end in ‘nine’ (we’re in one right now; stay tuned!), so the room was a-buzz: among the dozens of other wines and vintages on offer were Corton Grand Cru in 1999, 89, 79, 69, 59 and 49!   So we started back through the years.  We’ve been in Burgundy for 25 of them, so some of the first vintages we tasted were familiar, and it was a pleasure to see them at full maturity.  As we moved into 70s however, the tasting took on a new dimension.  These wines, though still accessible and full of life, were becoming rarities; those last few bottles. And then there at the end of the cellar sat the old stuff.  There’s a sense of privilege to be among the people who keep and respect such things, to hear them talk.  A little sip, a shiver of understanding.  Many of the people there were obviously life-long friends of Roland, so memories were dislodged as the years passed by again in the bottle.  Talk of drought and hail turned easily to talk of birth and marriage; life is work and work is life. The things you can learn with a wine glass in your hand!

BIG NEWS !

The big news around here is that Ellie’s cookbook is finished!  As a matter of fact, it should be out on Amazon at about the time you receive this issue of ‘Selections’.  It’s called ‘At Home in Burgundy—The Papillon Recipes’ by Eleanor Garvin, and it’s a collection of over 100 of the recipes that she has prepared for guests either on board the hotel barge ‘Papillon’ or with our land-based Papillon tours here in Burgundy.  It’s also the story of how we arrived and made our home here.  (Wine notes and photos by yours truly!)  So of course we are all very excited. We are going on-line with foodstuff.eldenwine.com which will be a cuisine and lifestyle extension of www.eldenwine.com  There for the first time we’ll be able to include all of our wine and food activities, be they here at home in Burgundy, or elsewhere when we’re out and about.  In essence, whenever and wherever we find something good, we can now share it with you.

Posted by Dennis December 2007