Looking For Jean-Charles Boisset Dimanche Tout La Journee Chez Moi Le 3 Mars, 2013 : I Will See Him Again Tomorrow, Monday

I worked all day at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits yesterday ( 3423 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. Washington D.C. 20008 , Tel : 202-363-4265 anthony.quinn@clevelandparkwines.com ) and so Sunday is generally my time to collapse and relax. All except that yesterday at work I got a call from my local French rep Jean Gagliolo that Monday starting at 1 P.M. was the portfolio wine-tasting of the Boisset Family Estate wines that includes France and California. I know many and have sold many over the years. I have met many of the winemakers , too as they have visited the store representing the burgundy ( Laurent ) and beaujolais properties, as well as the Califonia estates like LYETH ( Bill Arbios ). Sam our East Coast Boisset rep at the time even brought Jean-Claude to the store once for a visit and a tasting. What a grand treat that was! We have Nicole Burke a lovely " new " female East Coast rep for the Boisset Family Estate wines. Just a couple of weeks ago Carol stopped by not just once ( the first visit included some excellent Macon Villages white burgundy and some equally excellent 2011 Cotes Du Rhone from LOUIS BERNARD - both of which were priced and on the shelves and floor-stacked for sale already but twice. On her second visit she and her French partner-in-crime-business came by wearing the hats of CHARLES DE FERE, BOUCHARD AINEE Et FILS and the DOMAINE De La VOUGERAIE , too. Nicole said that she expected that Jean Gagliolo might be joining them/ He did, to towards the end of the wine-tasting of the " new " vintages of the CHARLES DU FERE French sparkling wines ( the dry clear brut, the dry and elegant rose ) and the " new " off-dry Muscat / Moscato-style French alternative to an Italian Moscato. But wait, this is a more complicated story and so I have to back-track. Before Nicole came to call at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits , and after Sam left there was another gentleman calling on us. Thanks to him we had been selling both the JCB Boisset Cremant du Bourgognes : both the clear brut as well as the brut rose. They both sell well with the rose perhaps doing a bit better now in the winter : both $21.99 - balanced, flavorful, distinct, bright and well-worth the $22 we are asking for them. That is why we just had a bottle or two - maybe three of the brut and one bottle of the brut rose when Nicole visited. On both of her visits Jean-Charles I took the time to point things out to her so that she could see that we had them and were already selling them. I think this is important : to know one's products, who one buys them from, and to give credit to those that have placed and done their jobs well over the years. In this case, of course all my attention was drawn to the Boisset Family Wine portfolio. Mais bien sur : c'est bien normal ca! Over the years I have posted various of these wine visits from owners and winemakers and I have to go back and look at them myself : but I know that I have some here of the French winemaker from Beaujolais that visited and tasted ( and that we bought and sold well with Sam's help ), as well as the burgundies from BOUCHARD-AINE that we tasted with the older gentleman Laurent that was then the winemaker. he would come and visit and taste with us. he always brought his broad, brimming smile and good cheer ( as well as good wine ) : and we would taste and have a great time and order some everyday wines through Jean Gagliolo as well as some direct-import/special-pricing dry reds and whites from burgundy. What a pleasure that was. We were shown the great wine posters as well with the many wine glasses filled in with one of them with the varying shades of white to gold to real golden : and the others filled with lovely shades and nuances of reds. In the second poster the wine glasses were filled with various fruit! I took the time to point various Boisset wines out to Nicole on her two visits so far. I also tried to show here Gina Gallo's owns small-batch/ vintage-dated California Pinot Noirs with the buff-pencil-black labels with white print that she had made herself. I could not find them and assumed I had sold every bottle. However, the other day I unearthed two such bottles Jean-Charles. I have been pleased to sell them at the store at $32.99 a bottle I believe? I always say you have to give credit where credit is due. Gina, you certainly deserve credit for these deliciously smooth, full and balanced California Pinot Noirs that I have tasted twice now and bought from National Republic Distributors. But the one thing I want to mention before anything else Jean-Charles is my visit to Paris, France to see our great family friends in 2002. Back then Lew Fulton made a huge deal about he and his wife driving to burgundy and visiting BOUCHARD AINE Et FILS and having a grand time and a grand tasting. He loved the experience and how you did it. You taught them about wine, what to expect,what to look for, about the smells and the components, the grapes, the soils : everything. He had a the beautiful brochure that you all took money, effort and time to make well and you gave it to him and he took it back to Paris with the wines he bought. On our visit he gave me this brochure, and I think I had it handy when you visited Jean-Charles, and I believe that you signed it for me? Anyway, the posters went into our store window and stayed there for a long time: and I often showed the brochure to customers. I will continue this tonight after dinner but will post iy now for anyone to read " as is " before the grand tasting tomorrow. And that's where all the looking for Jean-Charles has come about today : I want to find the pictures that I took of you at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits when you visited to show you tomorrow! Cheers and stay-tuned for more. Anthony ( TONY ) Quinn Back from dinner , a lovely Vietnamese dinner here in Falls Church, Virginia at the corner of Annandale Road ( Route 50 ). The regular Tamarind Duck and the " special " Duck dish were excellent , as well as the Pork Bowl with Noodles and Vegetables : and of course the Spring and Garden Shrimp rolls to start with were fabulous! I looked for a Boisset BOUCHARD AINE but found nothing and so instead ordered the PASCAL JOLIVET Sancerre 2010 white Sauvignon Blanc and that worked well, but not as well perhaps as the Boisset Macon Villages would have with our three separate dishes? The wines that I continued to taste on Nicole's second visit were the BOUCHARD AINE & FILS Meursault 1er Cru " Signature Series " Poruzots that surprised me because it was bone-dry to my palate. I thought it tasted more like a Puligny Montrachet than it did a Meursault. Only eight barrels according to Nicole were made. To me like a Puligny Montrachet yet fleshier like a Chassagne Montrachet : that is what I wrote. We would sell it for close to $100 a bottle and are still thinking whether or not to buy it or not? Our decision is not based on the quality but the price that we would have to ask our customers to buy it in today's world that now includes the word : " sequestration ". It was great to have Neil Ruane the Export Manager for BOISSET Family Wineries with Nicole. He's British if I am not mistaken and has worked now / lived now in Burgundy, France for the last twenty years? Anyway, it was nice to hear what Neil had to add as we tasted. I cannot remember if it was he or Nicole Burke that told me about Anton Dupres the winemaker at both BOUCHARD AINE Et FILS that started with the 2011 vintage. Before that Neil told me that Anton had worked in Bordeaux at Chateau Cheval Blanc and then also in South Africa on the Lurton Project. I do not know about the Lurton project neil? Perhaps you can get Anton to comment here on this blog entry on the Lurton project and how perhaps it helped him to make better red and white Burgundies? One thing that I remember vividly is when Neil spoke about both the BOUCHARD AINE Et FILS wines as well as those of DOMAINE de la VOUGERAIE ( a brainchild of both Jean-Charles and his sister? is that correct? ) that it was like hearing something so intimate and introspective, so second-nature, that it was like listening to someone that lived and breathed - and had for a very long time - the land, the terrain, the terroir, the people and the food and the wine of Burgundy. I bet having you Neil take me on a tour of Burgundy would be very satisfying? This does not help matters : that is why we are thrilled to have a 2011 Macon-Villages on our shelves from BOUCHARD AINE Et FILS that we sell for only $14.99 a bottle. Imagine, you can buy almost seven bottles of the Macon-Villages for one bottle of the Meursault 2009 BOUCHARD AINE Et FILS. I know, I know : they are different wines and I should not compare : but these are extremely difficult times now. Nicole also gave me some of the " Signature Series " BOUCHARD AINE Et FILS CHassagne Montrachet 1er Cru " Les Macharelles " 2010 that would also sell on our shelves for around $100 a bottle. About this I wrote : " Chass : I'd chase after this! Excellent, like the extra style. When we tasted the BOUCHARD AINE Et FILS MOrey Saint Denis Grand " Clos De La Roche " 2009 I wrote : Bigger, thicker, more tannic, beefier, earthier yet still balanced, jeune. I was comparing this to the DOMAINE De La VOUGERAIE wines that I will talk shortly about : two delicious reds. Stay-tuned. Cheers, Anthony ( TONY ) Quinn Sorry that I have had to write this in parts. I am about to dash off to meet Jean Gagliolo now in Washington to drive to the Boisset Wine Estate Wine-Tasting with you Jean-Charles in a few minutes. But before I do I want to mention two things : 1) to finish my comments on Michel's second wine-tasting, and 2) J. MOREAU Pere Et Fils in Chablis. The last two wines that Michele tasted Michel Dumas and me on were : 1) The DOMAINE De La VOUGERAIE Vougeot " Clos Prieure " Rouge Monoploe 2010 ( that we would sell for over $100 a bottle ) that I wrote : " Jancis Robinson likes this, very light color, much, less is more, less extraction, very elegant. " For whatever reason at the time it did not work as well for me. But I realize that mood and time, weather, environment, whatever : all have a big impact on how we taste and evaluate wine as both the wine and we are alive and changing and adapting all the time, and never the same. Michele also tasted us on the 2) DOMAINE De La VOUGERAIE Nuits Saint George Corvee Pagets 1er Cru 2010 that would also sell for over $100 a bottle. I wrote : " Color - good flavor, mouth-grip, yet elegance, refinement, so subtle , beautiful red, lovely, , not heavy-handed ". I liked it. Jean-Charles, you must tell me more about how the DOMAINE de La VOUGERAIE came to be and what you and your sister envisioned and how it is coming to pass? I would like to hear it from you? You can write it all in French here in a comment if you do not mind? I also want you to know that it would be a great privilege sometime in the future to have you show me these properties and to reunite me again with my old friend that still works with you, Laurent that made the years for many years at BOUCHARD AINE & FILS : what a reunion that would be : what great stories we would share and create and what great quick portrait sketches I would be able to whip up on the spot! Cheers! On MOREAU Pere Et Fils Chablis I want to mention that in 1976 my father Harry Alan Quinn and I were taken on a special trip there by a Jean-Claude that worked for my father then at the American Embassy in POaris back in 1976. That is also when he gave my father a paperback book called CHABLIS Porte d'OR de la BOURGOGNE, written by Louis BRO, and published in 1059. They quoted MOLIERE Le Medicin Malgre Lui ... : " Qu'ils sont doux / Bouteille jolie / Qu'ils sont doux / Vos petits glou - gloux? / Mais mon sort ferait bien des jaloux / Si voux etiez toujours remplie. / Ah, bouteille, ma mie, / Pourquoi vos videz-vous! So true, cheers Jean Charles, a bientot! Anthony ( TONY ) Quinn I love those memories in France avec mon pere ... Jean-Charles, it's now the day after the great PORTFOLIO TOUR 2013 Wine-Tasting at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Maryland on Monday, March 4th, 2013 and I did find you in rare and wonderful form and with great stories, passion, humility and personal stories to share with us all fortunate enough to have sat and tasted at the BAROLO VS. BURGUNDY " Smackdown " ( modeled after Bobby Flay?!? ) as we tasted three red Burgundies from BOUCHARD AINE & FILS ( Gevrey Chambertin Lavaux St Jacques 2009, Clos de La Roche 2009, and DOMAINE de La VOUGERAIE Nuits St. Georges 2010 ) , and the Italian Piemonte house of BATASIOLO'S 2008 Barolo and the 2004 " Bofani and the 2004 Boscareto Barolos. You Jean-Charles spoke for the red Burgundies while Ricardo March spoke for the BATASIOLO Barol reds : and what a great sharing of information, passion and stories that was. Cheers, thanks again, TONY Wednesday morning at 12:25AM March 6th, 2013 before the snow starts to fall at 2 A.M .. c va faire beau je crois ...j'aime la neige Jean-Charles ... et les vins rouges aussie, les femmes aussi, l'art. la nouriture, la France, Italie, Europe ... la musique, la peinture, les gravures, les aquarelles ... j'aime etre vivant, moi ...