After purchasing some train tickets at the Beaune Gare around the corner, I walked the short blocks to see Philippe Pacalet.
He stood, in all of his curliness on the receiving bay, talking on his cell, looking very contented. I waved wildly to him, big grin on my face.
"Life sends you on paths you don't and can't expect," he says to me, folding up his phone.
I can't remember if he always greets me with a piece of life this way. I am not adverse. But I wasn't really into the early morning spiral down into my own nautilus.
And so while we caught up, I found myself wondering if my life been too controlled? I can't remember when a life changing choice has been presented to me. Or have I had those life changing moments and just not seen there was a door in the room. Perhaps the door was a tree and I didn't see the knob, mistaking it for a knot? Have I been too myopic, or has that kind of adventure never dropped deus ex machina from the sky?
But enough. I am now in the Jura, where the pendant-like pears are dripping in erotica on the tree. Equally distracting. Did a pear ever beckon so? And yet they were all wrapped up behind barbed wire. Metaphor is everywhere.
Back to Philippe and the 09s and '08s. It's all connected, afterall.
Philippe Pacalet and Monica
He confides in me that 2009 was weird ass. "Many of the malos went before the alcoholic. It makes me nervous," he says.
(note: two fermentations in wine making: the sugar into alcohol is the alcoholic. Malic acid into lactic acid is the malo. One starts with yeast the other with bacteria.)
But sometimes like life, the vintage throws curveballs as well.
Maria Jose Lopez de Heredia told me that when this happens, as it does at times, a UC Davis winemaker would drop dead on the spot, and goes through all sorts of controlled machinations to prevent it. But she's survived it and so have plenty of other winemakers.
Philippe's approach was that he was going to hope it was nature's way of dealing with an odd vintage, he was going to get on the bronco and go for a ride.
When I was staying with Becky Wasserman, she shared with me Fred Mugnier's impressions of '09. "He made Chateauneuf and not Chambolle. He was not happy and hopes his first impressions of the vintage, which seems massive, was wrong."
Tasting PP's 2009, Gevrey Village, I could see where Fred was coming from. The wine, not really even a month old, didn't have that telltale newness about it. That just born baby head feel and aroma to it. It seemed to have popped out of the womb fully formed.
In the cellar we tasted through the 08s. These are my first, and of course it's only Pacalet, but there seems to be some similarity with the 98s which actually was a vintage I liked (in the minority here). The tannins are terse and argumentative. The fruit is there, though, and there's some time before the whole story is revealed.
At this early stage, the most charming to me were:
Pommard (perfume, rustic, tannic), NSG village (add to the Pommard description a blast of red fruit and a long finish).
Chambolle--(touches of cinnamon)
C-M, 1er Cru (powerful powder)
G-C 1er Cru Les Perriers (yummy)
Charmes-Chambertin (for some reason I starred this one a few times. Did Alice like? Pretty. Tannic. Fruit and powder.)
What amazes me is that his Bel Air (Gevrey) is always backward and here as well.
And if you happen to see his Nuits St. George Blanc which is actually pinot blanc, pounce on it. (tangerine, lingering minerality, very flirty wine.)
