Wine Blogging Wednesday #39: Silver Coast Burgundy

This month's Wine Blogging Wednesday has a theme that's near and dear to my heart: value wines from Burgundy. Our host for this week's event, and the genius behind the theme, is Neil the Brooklynguy Who Loves Wine. He asked us to look for Burgundies from a specific region that often has better values than those found on the Cote d'Or (Burgundy's Gold Coast). In the Cote Chalonnaise and the Maconnais (map of the latter to the right), Neil explained, it was possible to find excellent wines that were characteristic of Burgundy but did not always have astronomical prices associated with them.

I've been drinking a lot more Burgundy this year, since I am trying to get over my phobia that all Burgundies are going to be wildly expensive. So I was eager to see what the store would turn up. What I found was a white Burgundy from Pouilly-Vinzelles in the Maconnais: the 2004 Domaine Larochette-Manciat Pouilly-Vinzelles Les Longeays made from chardonnay grapes. ($15.95, Chronicle Wine Cellar; available from other merchants for around $19).

This was one interesting bottle of wine: it was fascinating to drink and gave you lots to talk about if you were tasting it with others. It was bright straw in color--not too golden, nor too pale. When you sniffed it there was no fruit. At all. It smelled instead of almond, hazelnut, and stone. These nutty and mineral notes were echoed in the flavors, with perhaps just a whiff of citrus when the wine entered your mouth. The wine had a quality of a live electric wire after a storm (in a good way!), and it felt tense and alive in your mouth. This wine was fresh and complex, and delivered an awful lot for just under $16, so I thought it represented excellent QPR.

We had the wine with some mustard-tarragon roast chicken, some noodles tossed with parsley, and a salad. It was nice with the dish, but I think something even simpler--broiled scallops or fish, perhaps--would have been an even better pairing. The tarragon and Dijon mustard threatened to overwhelm the wine here.

Thanks once again to our host, and to Lenn Thompson of Lenndevours who dreamed up this event more than three years ago. I'll be sure to let you know when Neil posts what promises to be a terrific roundup, and I'll see you back here in December for WBW #40.