Month: June 2015

Claire Naudin’s Hautes Cotes de Nuits 2012 – Myosotis Arvensis

20150613_194831[1]Myosotis Arvensis is the Greek name of the lovely blue flower ‘forget me not’, an appropriate name for a wine we won’t forget for a while! As you can see from my previous post, we are big fans of Claire’s wine.  I like her natural style of wine making, which is all about the terroir and grape.  One again the fruit is to the fore here and you get a real sense of cherries and slightly smoked vanilla flavours. The relatively low alcohol percentage of 12.5%, means that you can enjoy drinking the wine with food, rather than becoming so drunk that you forget what you are drinking really quickly!  We tried it with a lovely apricot and pork pate on walnut bread and it complemented the flavours really well.

Hautes Cotes de Nuits isn’t the sexiest part of Burgundy and is often overlooked as it contains no premier crus.  But you overlook this AOC at your peril as the wines can offer an easy drinking taste of the Côte d’Or at a decent price. Magny-Les-Villers (where Naudin is based) is a pretty village and a good place from which to explore the appellation.

Just a few practical things – W e purchased this wine from http://www.mesbourgognes-beaune.com/

It cost us around 25 euros.

Clare Naudin’s Le Clou 34

Clare Naudin20150507_145919[1]Clare Naudin is a wonderful winemaker based in Magny les Villers which is a beautiful village just outside of Beaune in Burgundy.  Last night we tried her Le Clou 34, an unsulphured, unfiltered natural Aligote. The vintage was 2013 and it tasted really fresh with lovely undertones of flowers.  We drank it with a vegetarian pasta dish and it complimented the flavours perfectly.  Despite its historic roots as a classic Burgundian grape, Aligote has become something of a poor relative to Chardonnay in the last fifty years, an outsider grape used mainly as a mixer with cassis, another local brew, to make a kir cocktail.  But young winemakers have been starting to experiment with Aligotes again to make finer wines and it is worth looking out for especially among the bio and natural wine makers in Burgundy.  Aligote offers a chance to connect with the area’s ancient heritage and offers a rustic alternative to the aristocratic Chardonnay.  This is the second bottle of wine I have tried by Clare Naudin, much praised by Alice Feiring amongst others, and it certainly won’t be my last.