Drink Your Idols: Roumier’s Musigny 1976-2008
BY NEAL MARTIN |
They say you should never meet your idols because they never live up to your expectations in the flesh. In my lifetime, apart from TV celebrity Jim Bowen, the only hero that I have met is Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, better known as Brian Eno.
To enlighten those not au fait with his astounding curriculum vitae, Eno played the twiddly knobs as one of the glam rock lotharios of Roxy Music, then invented ambient music with a series of groundbreaking solo albums in the Seventies. And in his spare time he produced David Bowie’s epochal Berlin trilogy (Low, “Heroes” and Lodger), Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, U2’s The Joshua Tree and Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, among many others. In 2014, I blagged my way into an interview-cum-wine tasting at his music studio in Notting Hill for Noble Rot magazine. We shook hands. He was just as I imagined: oozing intellect and a sense of coolness only obtainable if you hung out with Bowie for much of your life. I gave him a copy of my Pomerol book since I had decided to present one to any musician name-checked in its pages, then tried to reconcile the surreal image of the man who co-wrote “Heroes” absorbed in my chapter on Clinet. I found him polite and congenial, perceptive to the nuances of wine and, by the end, tipsy. After he departed, I helped wash the wine glasses. My fellow washer-upper seemed just as starstruck, which is odd considering he is the drummer from Coldplay and had just performed at the Super Bowl with Beyoncé.
Maybe wine is the same. We spend years dreaming of the day we finally taste our pinup bottle, long presumed unobtainable and/or unaffordable. But as Gabrielle once sang, dreams can come true. And hopes can be skewed by wallet-busting price tags and, yes, inflated scores; instead of invoking a transcendental experience, our idol turns out to be mortal fermented grape juice. More often than not, unrealistic expectations lead to disappointment that festers into resentment, as you reflect upon all that wasted time dreaming about some beatified 100-point superlative-magnet that turned out to be little more than barely drinkable hyperbole.
Arguably, the Côte d’Or is home to more idols than any other wine region, even more than Bordeaux. At the top of the deification league, seated in their gilded thrones, are Romanée-Conti, La Tâche, Coche-Dury’s Corton-Charlemagne and Rousseau’s Chambertin, plus anything touched by the hand of Henri Jayer. To this select list we should add Domaine Georges Roumier’s elusive Musigny, the J.D. Salinger of Burgundy: it exists, but hardly anyone has drunk it. If you did drink it, would it match your expectations?
Cost aside, let me explain what I term “the Burgundy paradox.” The more exalted the vineyard, the smaller in size it is likely to be. Some Grand Crus struggle to fill a pièce or barrel. Their limited production and consequent prices conjure a sense of superiority over cuvées more abundant and therefore obtainable. But the reality is quite different. If a winemaker is only able to eke out a single barrel from his holding, then their options are severely limited. All your hopes rest on one barrel, which might be scuppered by an inclement growing season, human misjudgment or simply the unpredictable nature of winemaking. If it goes wrong, then too bad; lump it or leave it. That is precisely what happened with Roumier’s 2002 Musigny, where he judged the barrel to be excessively toasted and, midway through élevage, racked it into two used barrels to reduce the influence of oak. A producer blessed with multiple barrels is at liberty to declassify or sell off any that are not up to scratch – a recourse denied to those with just one shot at nailing their wine.
Scarcity also means that objective assessments can be difficult, especially in terms of a vertical, the litmus test for any self-respecting cuvée insofar as you can examine its performances over varying seasons within the context of a definable parcel of vines. Bottles from a single barrel are squirreled away, relegated to trinkets gathering dust or intended for premature and conspicuous consumption. The more expensive and elusive the cuvée, the tighter the hermetic seal that protects it from objective analysis.
