Dinner at Gola on the Fulham Road with some hardcore burgundy aficionados

I was supposed to fly home for Christmas on Sunday 19th December but my flight was cancelled owing to the bad weather (i.e., the fact that the UK has under-invested in infrastructure again, this time in up-to-date snow moving equipment). This meant that I missed our Tuesday Ledbury macro/wine dinner organised by Jeremy, and it was cancelled in the end.

So last night Jeremy organized another group of hardcore burgundy aficionados to show up for dinner at an Italian place called Gola, right in the depths of the Fulham Road in southwest London (not far from Chelsea FC). Tom is so hard core he only drinks burgundy. And they all know an awful lot about the subject to. We also had a couple of Italians - barolos/barbarescos - the only other wine that burg aficioandos accept as a potential and worthy competitor.

The protagonists:

Jeremy Carne, known as JC
Tom Blach (TB)
Paul Day (PD)
Angus Duncan (AD)
Ian Amstad (IA)


Flight one - whites with sword fish

Champagne Billiot 2002 (AD) - This is the best champagne I have tried in 2010. It is really gutsy, meaty, expansive and full-bodied. I am going to source some of this when I get back to the US. 93 points

Coche Dury Meursault 1996 (PD) - We were all half expecting this to be premoxed...but it wasn't. It had a super complex nose with faint hints of the most exotic fruits and quite a bit of oak. On the palate it was silky prodigious and structured; it was caressing and had a thrillingly long finish. Triumphant and WOTN it would put many a grand cru white burgundy to shame. 97

Flight two - golden oldies with pasta

Thomas Bassot Griottes Chambertin 1970 (JC) - Nobody held out much hope for this given the state it was in. The ullage was a good inch and a half while the cork was absolutely saturated. This had quite a lot of stink on it but a wonderfully pure core of complex fruit.

Proddutori del Barbaresco Barbaresco Ovello 1970 (AD) - A shouldered bottle it was pretty alive and lively with quite a bit of VA but the fruit is holding up well.

Maria Feyles Barolo Riserva Speciale 1978  (IA) - This had even more bottle stink and funk; underneath the wine was holding up and was not dead, but the amount of lavatorial stink was off-putting. (This is a very rare wine: picture of another vintage here):

Flight three - red burgundies with lamb

Lafarge Beaune Greves 1995 (TB) - Really tight young, fresh and bracing. An illustration of the backwardness of the 1995 vintage. Intellectually challenging it had an alluring tension, like an elastic band at full stretch. The vinuous equivalent of sitting naked on a snowy moutain top and beating your back with a birch. A maschochist's delight.

De Montille Pommard Pezerolles 1998 (TB) - A very fresh nose, this wine had a raciness about it and some more overtly attractive raspberry fruit, bit it too was taught and wound up like a coil. An excellent wine, it should evolve well over the next few years.

Faiveley Echezeaux 1990 (IA) - Stubbornly backward and tannic, but with first class raw materials. It did not want to open at all - downright obstreperous and recalcitrant. Frustrating but somehow invigorating. Don't touch for ten years, otherwise it will bite you. Let sleeping dogs lie.

I am going back to Gola tonight for another dinner - about the only place that is open.

Wine of the night: