1996 Domaine Armand Rousseau Chambertin Grand Cru
BY NEAL MARTIN |
Whenever I need an anecdote to clarify the inflation of Burgundy prices over recent years, I tell how one Tuesday night after work, my cousin came to my tiny flat in South London for supper. This would have been July 2003. I rustled up my signature dish of spaghetti Bolognaise and before you ask, no, I didn’t make my own sauce, I dumped a jar of Dolmio sauce into a frying pan of beef mince like anyone else who cannot cook. It deserved a decent splash of red fermented grape juice and I was in the mood for Pinot. Since my cousin and I go back a long way, I pulled out a bottle of 1996 Chambertin Grand Cru from Domaine Armand Rousseau. I had recently bought it for about fifty or sixty quid and I probably splashed a few drops into the sauce. My cousin approved. I thought it was delicious, albeit too young. We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening, little realizing that we had just polished off a bottle that 17 years later would cost you around £50,000 a case, about the price of the very flat we were drinking in. We had essentially drunk the equivalent of my living room.
Whenever I need an anecdote to clarify the inflation of Burgundy prices over recent years, I tell how one Tuesday night after work, my cousin came to my tiny flat in South London for supper. Since my cousin and I go back a long way, I pulled out a bottle of 1996 Chambertin Grand Cru from Domaine Armand Rousseau.
