Victor Fagon Cote de Nuits Villages 2023 YouTube

Hello, welcome to another Burgundy with Tweedy video. Another gloomy day out. The sun is trying to poke through the clouds in places, but it's a little bit wet still. Rained quite hard earlier, I'm getting dripped on, but it's not actively raining right now. I have ended up putting in another order with Costco. I recently had that Fourier Gevrey Chambartin, the 2023 vintage, an absolute bargain, I thought at 73 pounds for a wine that really ought to be selling for in excess of 100. And as I mentioned in the video, at the time of filming, that 2023 vintage was still available from Costco. But by the time I got round to editing and uploading the video a few days later, as I tried to insert some notes on screen, they had actually sold out, but Costco had moved on to, interestingly, the previous vintage, and it even had a little new logo in the corner. I haven't tried the 2022 vintage, and I'm not going to be doing that today before you get your hopes up, this is a different wine, but that prompted me to put in another order. There is a minimum order of six bottles mixed of any of the wines in their, what do they call it, mix and match or whatever, offer. So I had to fill up a case of six. One of those is this. Now, don't beat yourself up if you're based in the UK like I am, and you've never heard of this producer before, because I certainly hadn't. And there is a reason for that. It is an alternative name for a producer that you might be more familiar with. I'm struggling to pronounce this. Is it something like Victor Fagon? And Victor Fagon, however you pronounce that, is in fact an alternative name, so I'm led to believe by what it said on the internet, for Maison Ambroise, Bertrand Ambroise. And I'm fairly sure I have featured some wines from Ambroise before. And in fact, it even suggested somewhere that they basically just relabel all of the different wines they make, all the different appellations, with this Victor Fagon producer. It is a Cote-de-Nuis village. Looking at the Bertrand Ambroise site, the grapes probably come from Premo Prisset. If I put that on screen and you can see what I'm trying to say, Premo Prisset, which is one of those five villages in the Cote-de-Nuis that does not get its own appellation and gets lumped in with this catch-all of Cote-de-Nuis village. Two of them up north, three of them down south. That was an appallingly long intro, wasn't it, for what may just be fairly run-of-the-mill wine. So just under 30 quid from Costco. I don't think this is really intended to be sold in Britain at all. I think it's just the fact that Costco is, as you may be aware, an American company, and somehow they've ended up selling some of it in the UK. I don't think you would normally be able to buy wine under this name in the UK, but you would probably be able to buy it as Maison Ambroise, and it would be the same wine. Does that make sense? I could have probably said all that in a much more succinct way, couldn't I? And have I said it's a 2023 vintage? So it is very young, again. If the appellation is relatively humble, something that won't demand a high price, I imagine decisions have been made in the winery to make a wine that can be enjoyed relatively young. I wonder if somewhere on the packaging they might have let slip and actually said this is in fact Bertrand Ambroise, but the cork is a Daim cork, a Daim 10, so they possibly expect it to be aged for up to 10 years, maybe. But it doesn't say anything about the producer's name there, so we're not given any clues that this is in fact, as I said, Bertrand Ambroise. There is a nice amount of red there. I'm going to avoid saying it's somewhere in the middle. I would say that's over towards the reddish side of things there. Fairly sort of bright red cherry sort of a colour. Before the first swirl, hmm, that's like dried out Ribena. Imagine as a child you had been drinking Ribena out of the cup and then you'd sort of left it in the bottom of the cup and it had partly evaporated and therefore condensed. You end up with a sort of crust. Does that ever happen to you as a child? You've probably never had Ribena as a child. It's a bit like that. There is also something a little bit woody, a little bit like match paper, match striking paper, which is not a note that I'm normally a fan of. There might be something slightly floral there. Yeah, possibly hedgerow-y fruit as well. And maybe the floral thing could be rosehip actually. Sort of woody, hedgerow-y, somewhat red and black berry fruit. Kind of knows, but hopefully that will become clearer or nicer with a bit of a swirl. Yeah, a brighter sense of juice now. I think again, I'm thinking of darker fruits, blackcurrant, blackberry, bit more of a sense of fresh Ribena now rather than stale, crusty Ribena in a cup that's been left out overnight. But still definitely some bramble-y or woody kind of notes. Could even be sort of foliage actually, that sort of, the hedge, the actual, not just the fruit from the hedgerow, but the actual hedge itself. Yeah, kind of woody, leafy. Yeah, so there's a lot going on there apart from just the fruit, but the glimpses of the fruit I can get are actually fairly pleasant, I would say. But it is getting a little bit lost in the noise of this thicket, these brambles, the hedge, a thorny hedge almost. It feels like a messy, thorny hedge. All right, first sip there, a little bit austere, I would say. And tiny bit lighter than I perhaps expected. Maybe the, perhaps the colour and the look of that does give a slight sense of a lighter wine, but a little bit on the light side, not giving up a huge amount of fruit on that first sip. And a little bit spicy actually. I think there's definitely some wood influence here, some quite strong wood influence that's actually lending a bit of spice to that. So it's an interesting combination of being sort of light in terms of body and fruit presence, but actually a bit woody, spicy, slightly coarse mouthfeel. I suppose that's partly tannins, but do actually get a slight sensation of an almost woody texture to the, not beautifully varnished smooth wood, but a slight sort of roughness to the texture of that. And it's tannin, isn't it? It gives the illusion on the palate of wooden lollipop stick, something like that. So first impressions, probably not really a wine for me, but I will mull this over a period of time. Perhaps it does need a little bit of time to wake up. Some of those notes are suggesting to me that it just needs a lot more swilling around and airing and acclimatization. I'll perhaps mull it over for a bit and come back to you. Some quick further thoughts. It is softening a little bit on the palate. Those harsh, almost woody edges to the mouthfeel are loosening up a bit. And it's giving up a tiny bit more fruit, but actually on the palate, it is one of those slightly redcurranty, cranberry sort of fruit characters at the moment. It's also very, very dry. I think that's one thing I'm noticing here. I'd really like to see a little bit more sugar in this, actually, to help express that fruit. I think that's part of what's holding it back right now. A lot of things about this are suggesting to me a wine that is really a bit too young. I probably said at the start, you'd expect a sort of not particularly lofty appellation like Cote du Neuilly-Village to be designed to be consumed quite young. But then on the other hand, we had that hint with the 10-year guarantee on the Daim cork that they perhaps do expect this to be aged a bit. I think particularly the strong presence of the woody notes there, there was some amount of new oak, I think, used during winemaking. Unless that's the ultimate style they wanted, that to me sort of says something that they would expect to be aged a bit longer so that can soften up and you can enjoy the rest of the wine. To me, there's a bit too much wood and all that stuff at the moment. And it's quite dry, quite austere on the palate. The fruit that is there is cranberry, redcurranty sort of fruit. Despite those earlier hints that were a bit more bramble-y on the nose, a bit more blackberry-ish on the palate. I think it's just the dryness, really. I think without a little bit more sugar, the wood and those other sort of slightly astringent qualities to it just overwhelm a bit. I'll keep mulling it over, perhaps third time's a charm. And maybe when I come back to this in a few minutes from now, I'll have found something that I actually do like about it. I should probably give some closing thoughts then. It's not really changing drastically. This is glass three now and I've been sat here for, getting on for an hour. So if it were going to open up as a result of that aeration, it would have done so by now, but it's still pretty woody on the nose and not giving up a lot of fruit there. Oh, I'm wood, basically, really woody now. And as I said earlier, although it has softened a bit on the palate, or perhaps I've just become used to it, still a little bit austere. So it's quite possibly just an age thing, isn't it? This is still very, very young. It's a 2023. It's two and a half years at best off the vine, probably a little bit less. Could be two and a third years off the vine. The wood will almost certainly calm down a bit with age, but I think that probably needs another two years. My very limited experience of trying wines when they're far too woody and then trying them again for two, three years later, then I think that will probably make a difference. A more professional wine critic would probably give you more insight than that, but it was an interesting experiment. Like I say, it was sort of a case filler, really. The main reason I put it in that order with Costco was that I wanted those Fourier Gerberit Chamartins. It was under 30 quid, so it's not a great loss, and it might well be good in two years, three years, five years from now. As I said, a Diam cork with a 10-year guarantee, I think is a clue that the winemaker is saying they sort of expect this to be aged a bit more than five years, which would be the next grade down. It's not always that simple, but it's a hint at least of what they expect in terms of how long this is gonna be aged for, but I really just don't think that's great now, to be honest. Two years from now, it might be nice. Right now, not really my cup of tea, at least. If you like really woody, austere wines, then knock yourselves out. You might well enjoy this. Perhaps not for me, though. That said, I'm having a delightful time, as always, sitting in the woods. Even if the wine is a bit underwhelming, the woodland backdrop is anything but. Even on this grey, grim day, I'm getting a little bit of orangey glow of possible sunset over there. I'm too lazy to go out to an open spot where I'd see it better, but really nice to be here, even with slightly subpar, at this point in its aging journey, wine. I'll stop talking now. This has been an unnecessarily long video for a not particularly remarkable wine. Cheers. How you doing?