This time I compared two village level red burgundies from different villages, both 2011 Méo-Camuzet, one from Marsannay and one from Morey-Saint-Denis. The grapes for a village level wine must all come from designated vineyards in that village, but don’t necessarily come from a single vineyard. Single vineyard wines from Premier Cru or Grand Cru vineyards get an additional vineyard designation. The classification of vineyards was made in 1861!

Both villages are in the Côte de Nuits, shown in green in the map on the left and expanded on the right. Marsannay is at the northern end and More-Saint-Denis is halfway down, about 10 km south of Marsannay.

I followed the same protocol as in my previous terroir experiment, giving myself two nights training followed by four nights of blind tasting. Since I had so much trouble with the nose last time I focused on the palate, and after two nights had formed a definite opinion about the difference, detectable on the very back of the palate, just before swallowing. The Morey-Saint-Denis had more dark fruit and tannin on the back end, whereas the Marsannay had more of an aromatic sour cherry character. On the second night I also detected after 20 minutes a slightly bruised plummy note on the nose of the Marsannay, but was not planning to use that.

On the first night of blind tasting I was sure of the difference on the first stip. I identified the back palate character described above for each wine. I took a few mores sips, each one confirming the last. I became quite sure and turned the bottles around. I was right.

The second and third nights did not go so well. On the second night I caught a whiff from one of the wines that made me think it was the Marsannay, not the aroma noted above, but a bright red fruit aroma. At first I thought the back palate confirmed this, then I started having trouble distinguishing using that criterion. I eventually went with my original impression and was wrong. On the third night I had trouble separating the wines at all, after a long drive home from Scottsdale, and guessed wrong again.

I almost gave up at that point, but decided to have one more try, this time as I was starting dinner after having had a couple of pre-dinner drinks. I immediately caught the plummy aroma from one of the wines, unmistakably the same as four nights ago. I was still having trouble on the back palate, but went with the identification of that wine as the Marsannay, and I was right.

What is to be made of this? The times when I was sure of the difference I was right, but I wasn’t always sure of the difference. When I was sure it was because I clearly recognized a characteristic noted (and written down contemporaneously) during the training phase. I’ll take this as evidence that the wines have different character detectable by humans; whether it is terroir is another matter. As is what that term even means!

Six years ago I tasted two red Burgundies on the same day from the same producer, same vintage, but different vineyards: 2010 Domaine Lucien Boillot et Fils Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru La Perrière and 2010 Domaine Lucien Boillot et Fils Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Corbeaux. I was interested in whether I could tell the difference. And indeed, I described and rated the wines differently. I have one bottle of each left and decided to do a more rigorous experiment. Over the course of four nights I poured a tasting quantity of each wine, using a Coravin to preserve the bottle for the following night. The first two nights I was trying to train my palate on the difference and knew which wine was in each glass. The second two nights I tasted the wines blind and tried to identify which one was which.

Before I describe the results, I should point out that it the two vineyards are very close to each other. Here is a map of Gevrey-Chambertin.

It’s hard to see, but Les Corbeaux is above the M and La Perrière is below the A in CHAMBERTIN. Still, I had high hopes that I would be able to detect a difference.

The first night I wrote that the Perrière had “more fruit and flowers on the nose,” whereas the Corbeaux had “more funk and earth.” On the second night I reversed this description, so I decided that it might make more sense to go by the palate. I wrote that I was getting a “salty note from the Corbeaux and lemony acids from the Perriere.” There was also something hair raising about the aroma of the Corbeaux. On the third night, tasting blind, I used the salty note palate as the criterion, and got the answer wrong. So apparently the palate was just as changeable as the nose. On the fourth night I decided simply to go with the wine that I liked better. In 2014 I gave the Perrières 93 and the Corbeaux a 95, and in 2020 the scores were 92 and 94, and I had noted that emotional charge in the aroma of the Corbeaux. There was certainly one wine that I liked better on the fourth night. It turned out to be the Perrières.

My conclusion is that there is no difference discernable by me in these wines. This is not surprising given the proximity of the vineyards, but I do not rule out that someone with a finer sensitivity could consistently distinguish them.

Another, perhaps more interesting, observation is that my brain, being told that the two wines were different, worked hard to come up with differences. Given a complex mix of aromas and flavors, it picked different components of the mix to distinguish the two and gravitated successive sips in the course of one night towards those components. But it came up with different components on different nights. I think this a great illustration of the importance of blind tasting.

On a final note, I just got an email announcing availability of the 2017 Chevillon Nuits-Saint-Georges, which included the following helpful map.

Note the positioning of Les Perrières relative to Les Cailles, diagonally on a crossroads to the left of the map. Les Cailles is almost 50% more expensive than Les Perrières.

I did this experiment back in August of 2019, but left soon after for Italy to be with Amy and didn’t get around to writing it up until now. The wine was a 2012 Clusel-Roch Côte-Rôtie. One bottle had been sitting in my  house since April 2017, with temperatures ranging from 58º to 84º, with an average of 73º. The other had been in my temperature controlled cellar, at temperatures ranging from 49º to 60º, with an average of 58º. Although I’m not convinced humidity is as important as people say it is, I note also a significant difference in average humidity: 52% in the cellar versus 13% in the house.

We followed the usual protocol. Here are the results showing each person’s guess at the odd one out, and their guess at the source if they made one (H=house, C=cellar):

	Guess	Source	Truth
Bill	1	Cellar	HCH
Sally	3	Cellar	HCH
Amy	3	House	CHH
Housten	1	Cellar	CHH
Rob	2		HHC
Penny	3		CCH

Two people guessed correctly, and one of them, Housten, correctly identified the source. He said that number 1, from the cellar,  was “brighter.” Penny, who did not make a guess as to the source, said that number 3, from the house, was “sharper and more acidic.”

Of course, 2 out of 6 is exactly the probability of getting the answer correct if you guess randomly. As with my previous aging experiment, the evidence so far in favor of temperature controlled storage is weak. But it’s only been 2 years. I have 7 more years to go.

Here is my tasting note on the wine.