A NIGHT IN BEAUNE - THREE INSPIRING WINES TASTED BLIND
by Edouard Bourgeois
Friday, June 20, 2025
It has become a new tradition for my two childhood friends and I to meet up for what we like to describe as “a blind tasting of inspiring wines”. My buddies don’t work in the wine industry but their palate and hedonistic spirit are perfectly in tune with mine!
Tasting bottles blind is always the most honest way to judge. Zero indication on what the wine could be and only your senses to appreciate is often very humbling. That night in Beaune, we had prepared the essential and copious array of fine cheeses and charcuterie, generously spread on the table of our Air BnB while PSG was demonstrating how to play soccer on TV in the background during the Final of the Champions’ league…
We started off with a beautifully fresh, zippy Aligoté from Alexandra Couvreur, a producer based in Bouze-lès-Beaune. To be perfectly honest, I think the newer fad around Aligoté is a bit exaggerated and seeing some of these wines reach well over 4 digits is simply absurd. But this bottle was truly delicious and maybe the best Aligoté I’ve ever had, reminding me of a young, lively Chenin Blanc.
With the second wine, we moved on to a mind-blowing experience. Again served blind, I was immediately convinced to be smelling a white Burgundy. I went even further by guessing Meursault and suggested it could be from the one and only, Coche-Dury. I was totally wrong, but I also got tricked. Was it from Burgundy? Nope, Portugal! Was it even made from Chardonnay grapes? Nope, a blend of Rabigato, Códega do Larinho, and Arinto! But finally, the name of the wine, unscrupulously written in bold letters: COCHE. What? Certainly, a bold and ambitious move from this famous producer Niepoort, which of course is fueling controversy. In my opinion, an impressive tour de force and admittedly a great wine.
But lastly, the bottle that impressed me the most was a gorgeous Jura elixir from Renaud Bruyere and Adeline Houillon, vignerons in Pupillin. Smelling this wine blind was wild! Extravagant notes of tropical fruits reminded me of a fruity Rhum punch! Pineapple, Mango, Vanilla, sweet pear, peach, and simply incredible. Once I was told it was from the Jura (that’s right, I didn’t guess!) the light ruby colour in the glass could only come from one grape, the magic Ploussard (sometimes called Poulsard). With nothing added (understand no sulfites added) and made using biodynamically principle, the Ploussard from this dynamic couple is made using carbonic maceration (a method largely used in Beaujolais) and is obviously unfiltered so the result is a bit cloudy. We were lucky on top of it to taste a bottle with a bit of age from the 2016 vintage. This producer is imported here in the US by natural wine guru Zev Rovine, and the wines from Bruyere/Houillon have become super hip within the sommelier community.
