From €6.88, $16.99, and £48 for six or £95 for 12 bottles in bond
There is no shortage of value to be found among the plethora of 2009 burgundies currently on offer – even if it is the most expensive wines that seem to have been most scrambled for. And I repeat my impression that the 2009s are so ripe across the board, that in a way it is the lesser appellations that offer relatively the best value – wines from vineyards that in cooler years struggle to ripen fully. In more marginal growing seasons, it really does pay to invest in the most propitiously sited vines. In 2009 we are presented with lovely ripe grapes from every nook and sheltered cranny on the Côte d'Or.
I tasted many a luscious Bourgogne Rouge during my tastings of 2009 burgundies in both Burgundy in late October and in London last month. Purple pagers can simply go to our tasting notes search and choose the appellation Bourgogne and vintage 2009 in the relevant boxes on the right-hand panel to find tasting notes on 100 Bourgognes of both colours. Clicking on the heading of the Score column will order them in declining order of score out of 20 and I see I gave 11 of them a score of 16.5 – and was sufficiently convinced by the ability of Coche-Dury's Bourgogne Rouge to give it 16.5+. Coche's reds can quite often be found on smart restaurant wine lists as sommeliers have to buy these in order to get their hands on this producer's hugely sought after whites, so I advise you to look
favourably on Coche-Dury 2009 Bourgogne Rouge a year or two down the track. I thought it should be drinking well 2013-16 – although retail prices seem, alas, to have gone through the roof.
I gave Hudelot-Noëllat 2009 Bourgogne Rouge a score of 16 out of 20 for what it's worth and thought it was particularly good value. As you can see, it is possible, via good old wine-searcher.com, to find it in France for under seven euros a bottle – such a good price it's almost worth going to France especially for. And even in the UK it can be found chez Howard Ripley for just £48 for six bottles in bond. Once the wine arrives in the UK, you'll have to pay duty and VAT, which, at current rates, will put the price up to £11.63 per bottle – about the same as the least expensive price quoted by wine-searcher for a single bottle in the US, and much less than many a comparable New World Pinot Noir.
I would not put this wine into storage but have it shipped straight to your wine rack and enjoy it over the next couple of years. When tasting it I noted that it looked more or less the same light cherry red as the premier cru Gevrey from Louis Boillot tasted alongside it. I wrote: 'Full, ripe and immediate on the nose. Amazingly sweet palate entry. Lots of zest – almost orange zest! There is lightness here but great balance too. Easy, friendly. Sweet and fresh. Great stuff for early drinking. Very good value.'
This producer makes very attractively perfumed wines with good balance and no excess of oak. Hudelot-Noëllat's 2009s were generally very attractive with sufficient freshness.
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