Exclusive offer: 5/5/2023 — Unicorn discovered: Affordable Burgundy by Baptiste Guyot
Offer available through Monday, 5/8/2023, or as inventory lasts.
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Hi everyone –
About a year ago, over at The Wine Workshop, we presented our Affordable Burgundy class for the last time.
In that webinar we explained the situations that led to the term “affordable” to be simply be unreachable for the region of Burgundy, and therefore we made the announcement that we’ll never again be able to do an affordable Burgundy class.
A combination of lower supply (short harvests), higher demand, climate change, supply chain issues, rising costs of doing business, and inflation had caused the perfect storm.
Gone, we declared, were the days of going to the store on a weeknight and deciding on a whim to roll the dice on a $20-30 bottle of Burgundy, especially from a smaller producer who practices sustainable farming. Premier Cru wines of quality were becoming unreachable in the $100+ range.
We’ve found a unicorn: Baptiste Guyot
Hunting through the catalogs and warehouses of local importers, we were intrigued by a name we had not come across before: Baptiste Guyot.
The more we learned, and the more we tasted, the more we liked.
Baptiste Guyot is a small producer, farming tiny plots in a range of Burgundy appellations and villages. He farms organically when possible, sustainably always, and seems to maintain an ‘under the radar’ personality. Web searches brought up a bit of info, but mostly cut-and-pasted from other websites.
In other words, this guy is not yet known to most wine drinkers, especially in America. The simple labels don’t draw attention, and I sense that Guyot is okay with that. Some producers just want to quietly do what they do (a very old-school Burgundian personality trait), and that’s awesome for us.
The wines are brought into St. Paul directly by local superstar distributor New France Wine Company, which has a long history of doing the hard work of visiting Europe, knocking on doors, signing contracts, and shipping containers from top regions directly into the Twin Cities.
This is super important, for when a direct shipping relationship is established you can often scratch out the importer’s markup (or at least minimize what most importers will add to the tab) and end up with larger bang for the buck. Wines that are “DI’d” (direct imported) will often be 20-35% less on the shelf than if they were brought in by a national big-name importer.
Baptiste Guyot Bourgogne Rouge 2021
This is the red Burgundy bargain of the year.
It’s assembled from a wide range of sustainable vineyard sources, all controlled and farmed by Baptise Guyot. To offer a wine of this quality at this price is becoming so rare in today’s market.
OMG this is good.
TASTING NOTE from Angela and Jason
Classic cherry and black pepper. Young and bright, with super elegant fruit and snappy acids. This sounds boring to say, but it’s simply damn good classic Bourgogne. The kind of wine you have a sip of and want another. It’s like the opening chords of Sweet Home Alabama. Regardless of what you think of Lynyrd Skynyrd, and keeping politics out of the conversation, those opening notes get played and everybody in the room starts tapping their feet and bobbing their head. It’s impossible not to. This is the wine version of Sweet Home Alabama.
Baptiste Guyot Beaune “Clos du Foulot” Blanc Monopole 2020
This is the only white Burgundy in this offer, and it’s a stunner.
Beaune AOC gets overlooked by many, mainly because it’s not very contiguous being that the city of Beaune is right in the middle. Add to that a variety of micro-climates and soils, and there isn’t a firm identity that many can attribute to the wines of the area.
However, some of the top plots in all of Burgundy are located here including the famous “Baby Jesus” wines of Drouhin.
This particular wine is from the Clos du Foulot vineyard, which is a monopole (100% in control of one producer) of Baptiste Guyot.
TASTING NOTE from Angela and Jason
Bigtime orchard nose, loads of apple and pear but with underlying minerality. This is another example of why we LOVE white Burgundy so much. There is nothing else like it. The mid-palate is totally intact, unlike many Chardonnays we’ve tried lately from outside of Burgundy. “It’s brainy … Layers of intelligent flavors … I never get that from California Chardonnay. Wow. 🤩 ” – Angela
We enjoyed this wine first with chicken fajitas and it held up perfect against the bold Mexican flavors, peppers, and onions. Then we finished it off while watching Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) and eating small-kernel popcorn topped with fancy butter and truffle salt.
Two wines from the village of Pernand-Vergelesses
Pernand-Vergelessess is a very special appellation, located back behind the Hill of Corton, wedged between two lines of hills. It’s a village to memorize and seek out. It’s tucked away, as you can see from this map:
This geographic situation is super important, for the hills protect this pocket from the increasing heat of the summer temperatures. If there is one village in Burgundy that everyone is watching carefully due to the quality rising seemingly every year, it is here.
Also note that the legendary Charlemagne Grand Cru vineyards are directly across the road from Pernand-Vergelesses. Pretty cool.
Flatiron Wine and Spirits of NYC and SF have done a nice little write-up on this region.
Baptiste Guyot Pernand-Vergelesses Vieilles Vignes Rouge 2019
Oh. Wow.
TASTING NOTE from Angela and Jason
So beautiful in the glass and so rich right up front. It’s a wave of fruit coming from a top quality vintage, with candied raspberry, licorice, spice box and pepper, plum, aromas of damp earth (just enough). The taste is firm, present, persistent, and so … Burgundy. Light bodied, but with presence.
It’s elegant. It’s detailed. It’s so so so good. The quality of the 2019 vintage is showing big time.
Note: only 11 bottles of this gem are available. Sorry.
Baptiste Guyot Pernand-Vergelesses “En Caradeux” Rouge Premier Cru 2020
The En Caradeaux vineyard is literally a stone’s throw from En Charlemagne, where some of the most expensive wines of Burgundy are produced. This is the ultimate “pocket” between the two hills, and the land here is becoming coveted by the top names.
Yet here, in this offer, we can tap into a gem from this vineyard for under $50. Premier Cru red Burgundy for under $50 a bottle is absolutely unheard of!
TASTING NOTE from Angela and Jason
The color is darker and younger than the 2019 (as it should be, as a Premier Cru with one year less age). Aromas of plum, wrapped in pipe tobacco, wrapped in a magical container of some sort that is keeping hold of everything. This is what a young Burgundy is all about, and shows that it will evolve slowly over the next 5-8 years. It for sure needs a bit more time, and I wouldn’t hesitate to mark this for Thanksgiving or Christmas 2023 (with an hour or two of decanting).
This is SEAMLESS. So silky and refined. I haven’t had a wine like this in a while, where from entry to finish it’s a continuous line of goodness with no ups or downs.
It kinda left me speechless. That’s what great Burgundy does to me.
Buying advice
I didn’t expect to ever say the words “affordable” and “Burgundy” together ever again. But here we are. Of course, I recognize that this is a first world problem and there are far more things in the world to worry about than the cost of Premier Cru fill-in-the-blank. But on the other hand, wines like these have the capability to return us to the roots of why we love wine: a particular grape variety, from a very specific spot, through the lens of the vintage and the winemaker. THIS IS WHY WE LOVE WINE, and Burgundy in particular.
All of these wines are punching above their weight class. I guarantee you’ll love any and all of them. They are stunning.
Orders placed will be available for pickup Wednesday next week.
Jason Kallsen
Sommelier and founder/owner of Twin Cities Wine Education
Offer is open now until Monday at 6:00pm central, or as inventory lasts.