La Paulée (Part 2)

Daniel

60 East 65th Street,

NY, NY;

Tel. (212) 288-0033

March 2009

The festivities at La Paulée continued with this superb lunch prepared by Daniel Boulud and his team of brilliant young chefs. All of the dishes were perfectly executed and utterly delicious. Anne-Claude Leflaive and sisters Marie-Andrée and Marie-Christine Mugneret offered an incredible selection of bottles from their own cellars. The growers were quite humble and even a touch reserved, as they were clearly moved by the significance of showing so many older vintages. Almost all of the wines were served from large formats, which added to the importance of the occasion.

[Photos: Copyright
Thomas Schauer]

The Leflaive wines were served in pairs, which gave tasters an invaluable opportunity to compare the estate’s Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles with the Chevalier-Montrachet across three vintages; 2002, 1996 and 1983. Les Pucelles is a 1er cru and Chevalier-Montrachet is, of course, a grand cru, but in all three flights I preferred the Pucelles for their greater verve, minerality and freshness. The Chevalier-Montrachets favored a more full-bodied, opulent expression of fruit which was certainly magnificent, but offered less complexity than the Pucelles. At this level, though, that was truly splitting hairs as all six wines from Leflaive were breathtaking.

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The festivities at La Paulée continued with this superb lunch prepared by Daniel Boulud and his team of brilliant young chefs. All of the dishes were perfectly executed and utterly delicious. Anne-Claude Leflaive and sisters Marie-Andrée and Marie-Christine Mugneret offered an incredible selection of bottles from their own cellars.