A taste of our tasting on Monday 20th: introducing the wines part 3
A bonus edition today, with the final two white wines on the list for our tasting at Zamora on Monday.
There are still places available at €49/head for an evening of food and wine in the company of Edouard Leach from Maison Françoise Chauvenet. If you'd like to join us, ring the restaurant on 021 239 0540 to book. Yesterday I wrote about the plain and unoaked Marguerite de Bourgogne Chardonnay, the first white wine of the night, but today I'm introducing the next two wines on the list, which show how the subtle use of aging in oak barrels can take that clean and simple style to another level of deliciousness.First is the Pouilly-Fuissé, which is – as you'll have gathered – a Chardonnay from Burgundy. I mention this because the name is easily enough confused with Pouilly-Fumé, which is a Sauvignon from the Loire Valley and thus a horse of a different colour.
Although the crispness of the plain Bourgogne is still there, there's a hint of vanilla-y oak on the nose and a definite creaminess on the palate that makes this a fuller-bodied wine, and a great choice for seafood or white meats.
Then it's from the sublime to the very sublime indeed: the last of the whites we'll be tasting on Monday is the Puligny-Montrachet Villages 2011. Although this could keep for several years yet, we're expecting it to demonstrate in spades the reasons why people get excited about great white Burgundy. The nervy minerality of the basic Chardonnay has been transformed into a flowers-and-hay-scented nutty bouquet that on the palate becomes astonishing smoothness and complexity, with rich, indulgent depths but still a definite backbone of fresh acidity holding all that sumptuous flavour in place. Which is no less than you'd expect considering this wine's lofty reputation and not inconsiderable price.
