Oso impromptu - Premier Cru Maximus

Have I ever shared why I love my drinking group? Here's why... One: we love wine. Two: we love Burgundy. Three: we always seek understanding about the region we love. Four: we make time (responsibly, of course!) anytime to explore Burgundy together. Five: we don't give $^~t about wine labels nor cru.

And so we decided overnight that we were going to Oso for a late dinner (9.30 pm) for another round of burgundy education. Andy picked a couple of wines and off we went. Oso is probably my favourite italian haunt for some inexplicable reasons. Yes, the food is great and the ambience too. But there's a certain cosiness I just find quite special and I have yet to find elsewhere that makes me want to come back.

At the bar, while waiting for our table to be ready, a blind white was poured. This had a gorgeous malic nose with some reticent vitamins on it. 2004? Yes it was. On the nose, there was toast and pickled olives. On the palate, equally malic (yummy!) with lemons and ripe limes, with persistent linearity and a finish that tapers off long. Meaty fruits but rather thin at the centre. Having said this, the overall balance was very nice, and the length of the finish more than made up for it. A delicious and extremely rare wine, according to Andy, it was Hubert Lignier Fixin Cepage Chardonnay 2004.

The first red was Jean Louis Trapet's Gevrey Chambertin 1er cru Petite Chapelle 2002. Cosy, fireplace ash and toasted meat in the nose amidst the Gevrey iron nose. Sweaty leather inflected black cherries, and this was just delicious if not anything else. The pitch was lacking comparatively coming from the cru and vintage, but this again, was from the other side of Gevrey combe lavaut, remember? A nice wine nonetheless.

The next wine outclassed the previous wine by a sizeable margin. In fact this was rather special. This had crushed red fruits, minerals and high-pitched Gevrey iron and Vitamin-B. The pitch was two steps up from the previous wine. Savoury, voluminous, sweet, powerful and persistent. A medium-scaled grand-cru wannabe, if you ask me. This was Fourrier Gevrey Chambertin 1er Cru Combe Aux Moines 2002. Wonderful, thought-provoking juice. Indeed a producer to watch out for.

We move down south to Vosne-Romanee next. This came from Sylvain Cathiard. The Vosne-Romanee Aux Malconsorts 1998 was very impressive. In fact the most impressive Vosne I've tasted for a long time, and considering the challenging vintage for the commune, the credibility of this wine was nothing short of outstanding. Briary black fruits on the nose and some sappiness, in spite of the perceptible stem treatment, which I thought was handled masterfully if he ever did so. There were Vosne spices and a purity of fruits which was quite cleansing, especially in the context of a Vosne wine. Authoritative, slightly wild wine but tampered with good transparency and breed. Impressive. Looking forward to more tasting around this domaine.

The last wine was a blind. It could only have come from Chambolle. On the nose this was all high-pitched raspberries ,all pristine and clean. This was pure sex in the mouth, an explosion of nothing but red fruits with icy sappiness, intriguing minerality and gentleness of great class. This was an example of palate staining sweetness and thorough ripeness of fruits without heaviness. Finished off with linear cleansing fruits which reminds me, as Andy also commented, of the great Henri Jayer's wines. Special. J.F. Mugnier Chambolle-Musigny les Fuees 2001.

We should do more tastings like this. None too grand, but all were great wines which showed exemplary typicity and class of its vineyards, and so quite enlightening and educational.