Out of My League?

So my last post concerned the Noir and two of its lovely incarnations (or incantations). To the infantile me, California and Oregon pinot noir are approachable. More so than say, (cue ominous/mysterious music) Burgundy. Yes, I have done the Chablis thing (swoon), and even the white Burgundy (swoon), but yet unto the red. Burgundy comes to me as this mysterious, difficult-to-grasp, expensive, hard-to-find liquid of ether. I can’t quest alone. I asked the aforementioned wine guy at the local Big Red for some advice on “a good, inexpensive (aka less than $25), red Burgundy. He got rather excited and knew exactly what to point out to me a 2004 Givry 1er Cru that he described well, and had enthusiasm for, and it seemed like a big, fruity, red from the warmer Cote Chalonnaise. Then on one of the endcaps, I saw a bottle of a Cote d’Or Burgundy from the tiny, not-so-well-respected appellation of Ladoix. It’s sort of on the border between the Cote de Nuits and the Cote du Beaune (please excuse my horrific French spelling, I’ll practice more later). The wine guy’s self-written shelf talker was very intriguing and the wine was compared with Catherine Denueve and was only $20 a bottle. You know the rest of the story. (Also, this wine christened my decanter.)

2004 Jean-Luc Dubois Ladoix “La Combe”
Price: $20
Varietal: pinot noir
Region: Ladoix, Burgundy, France
Alc.: 13% (love it)
Eye: Not crystalline clear, but a gorgeous bright strawberry-fresh red color. Pretty wine. Feminine if I ever saw a feminine red wine.
Nose: A little closed at first (should have decanted earlier), but then came the strawberries, cherries, rhubarb, and oolong tea.
Taste: Lovely. A bright rhubarb/cherry tartness floats smoothly across the palate, a little sort of soft, almost dusty tea-like tannins skirt through the mouth. No boozy heat, and almost no oak to speak of.

This wine very pleasantly surprised me. I was expecting a bad cheap French wine—which are much more offensive to me than a bad cheap New World wine. Nothing of the sorts! The lady of Burgundy just wrote on my mirror with some strawberry-flesh lipstick. Mmm. I’m sold.