The prospect of four mornings spent blind tasting some of the finest reds in the Cote d’Or would be a mouth-watering one to any Burgundy lover... 

...though the reality of tasting 244 embryonic red burgundies from one of the most tannic and deeply coloured vintages on record was a more sobering thought - the daunting idea of trying to retain an unflinching concentration to give each wine its fair chance whilst endless batteries of between four to nine wine flights come in, wave after to wave, to assault the senses. Fuelled by enough restorative baskets of bread and gallons of water, I would just about make it to the end, palate intact, I thought to myself.  And yet….  The 2015 confounded this and many other tasters in the room.  I was surprised by the openness, joy and energy I found in the wines, tasting them was a sheer pleasure from start to finish.  Make no mistake, this is a powerful and concentrated vintage, but one with a sense of balance.  Only a few wines displayed alcohols that were out of kilter. Equally some wines from some producers will always have harsh tannins, but for the most part I found the wines had nice contours  - tannins were fine-grained, even seamless in some cases.  Acidities were not obvious but you could sense the role they played in supporting the wines’ big structures. This is without doubt a vintage “de garde” but a classy one.

Guillaume d'Angerville treated us to a rare visit to London last week to share the wines of his family's historic domaine with both customers and journalists, over dinner and lunch the following day. The two mouth-watering events, which covered five vintages and eight premiers crus, reinforced our belief that this is one of the great Domaines of Burgundy.

Sem, Marquis d'Angerville, and Henri Gouges, sparked the move towards domaine bottling in the early 20th century and were also central to the development of the Premier and Grand Cru system. Many say that they did not put forward any Grands Crus from their own villages, Volnay and Nuits st Georges, to ensure the process was seen to be completely impartial. A shame, perhaps, for the village of Volnay but a delicious anomaly for today's savvy wine drinker.  The fine quality coming out of this domaine, and the village in general, is simply not reflected in the gap in prices to its Côte de Nuits neighbours.

Over the four days and 244 wines of Red Burgfest 2013 vintage, there were plenty of tannin-stained smiles.  

Judging by all of these bottled samples from the Cote d’Or’s finest crus and producers,  2013 is what it always promised to be from cask:  Overall a very good vintage that, whilst uneven, is capable of hitting the heights. The odd stain on the largely rosy tasting notes was that a few wines appeared to be picked a tad too early.  At best, though, this is a racy, ethereal and pure vintage with good intensity levels, there may not be the overall consistency or concentration of 2010 but it offers more charm and approachability in its youth. 

From Beaune the step up to the Côtes de Nuits is a big one. The quality jumps by an average of two points in twenty per wine on my scale.

The five flights of Nuits St Georges - forty five 1er crus in total - are of a uniform high quality and not a single dog amongst them. They have a gloss and silky concentration to add to big structures and fine tannins.

Flight one are the most southerly ( Premeaux ). All are Clos. I gave first equal place to Freddie Mugnier's Clos de La Marechale. It was packed with rich dark fruits, a wonderful complex middle palate and sumptous tannins