Well, I have very sad news to report. The Pinot and boeuf bourgignon tasting that I attended last night with my friend Kristen did not live up to my hopes and expectations at all. The wines were not very exciting, apart form 2 notable exceptions and the boeuf bourg was very sub-par. The 2 notable wine exceptions were a 2006 Bourgogne Rouge from Rene Leclerc, which, for a basic red Burgundy, had lots of concentrated flavours of fruit, earth and spice in very good harmony, backed up with good acidity and supple tannins, and was definitely the best value wine there for $22 a bottle, and drinking very nicely right now, though I'm not sure how long the bottle had been open. The other noteworthy wine was a 2005 Domaine Latour-Giraud Volnay Clos des Chenes, for around $55 a bottle I think. It was quite reserved on the nose, but on the palate it was considerably more concentrated, if a little tight, with complex flavours and excellent minerality supported by a good levels of acid and very fine tannins. This one is definitely built to last. I feel that it's is starting to close down a little, so stick it away if you have any. The other wines were all pretty characterless, generic Pinots, with no outstanding traits. There was the usual selection of crowd-pleasing, big, fruity new world efforts, made to be drunk pretty young, and also some cheaper Burgundies with no real distinguishing features. Shame.
To sum up, out of about 25 wines, only 2 of them got my juices flowing, which is really a piss-poor ratio to be honest. In fact, if I'm being brutally honest, the best thing about the tasting apart form the aforementioned 2 wines, was the brie and charcuterie that they provided for us. They did give us some very nice sausage.. And if you needed any other indication of how little we thought of the wines, we ended up leaving the Pinot Noir tasting with a bottle of a 1999 Reserva Rioja for to take to dinner with us. D'oh..! How insulting.. And all this on a flower day too.
