Alice et Olivier de Moor, Bourgogne Aligoté 2011

As far as I can remember, well you never know – wine and braincells don't get along that awfully well, my first 2011 Burg' so far! And my first Aligoté in two or three years! Probably not my favourite grape varietal!? The producers? Never ever heard of them before! Pretty embarrassing, I guess! Alice and Olivier de Moor are highly experienced and qualified oenologists who concentrate themselves on “minimum intervention wine” (or maybe even “Vin Naturel”)! After a few engagements in different wineries they established their own small estate in 1988 in the vicinity of Courgis/Chabils. All their wines are fermented with wild yeasts in approx. ten year old oak casks, are aged for approx. 11 months in neutral oak, don't get filtered, hardly sulphured and only sometimes fined. To me, this winery was a totally rencontre nouveau ! At first I thought they were Dutch dropouts or something like that! Well, not really correct!!! Let's see how my first 2011 was:

The colour wasn't overwhelmingly bright yellow or even white'ish. It really had a decent hue of clear bright yellow colour. Besides that it was slightly blunt and showed only a few very fine particles!

The bouquet appeared rather restrain and mild. Not as green'ish spicy as the bulk, at least in my experience, of Aligoté based wines. I think, was a bit tough for me this time, I got plenty of fresh nose feelings and scents of yellow lemons, hints of black pepper, freshly prepared Sushi rice and traces of sour cream. I might describe the nose as very contenting, fresh, even a bit invigorating, very clean and clear, but not that highly complicated!

The taste had a very gripping and fresh character throughout the entire tasting. For an Aligoté a really long lasting impression without any traces of bitterness or Aligoté typical harshness. The flavours were definitely dominated by fresh yellow apples, very lively lemons and a very mild herbal character. The additional mild and mute creaminess provided this wine a certain broad vigour. In conclusion: a really decent ****, very well balanced and honest seeming Aligoté! No shocking complexity or thrilling demand. Just a really fine and simple white wine. I assume one of the best Aligotés I ever had! If all (or many) Vin Naturel would taste like that … Oh, Wow man … that would change my mind completely!