Bouchard Pere et Fils, Chevalier Montrachet, La Cabotte, Grand Cru, 2008 versus 2009

I have just reported the 2009 vintage, and my friend brought along another bottle on the same dinner, obviously served blind. I was able to identify the two wines having a lot of commonalities, and I even suspect it’s probably the same winemaker although I blurted out it’s probably Bouchard but the plot was the normal Chevalier Montrachet for the 2008, and I was terribly off with my vintage guessing, I thought it was 1995 or 1996. I almost fell off my chair when my friend revealed the vintage was 2008 and was only 1 year apart from my bottle. Unsurprisingly, the dreaded premox came knocking on our door again! Actually my friend’s 2008 was not so bad, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to correlate the two bottles as coming from the same winemaker, the lack of some crucial element with the 2008 bottle made me thought it was the normal Chevalier Montrachet produced by Bouchard. The color from the photo told you otherwise, how can wine a year apart looked so different? Welcome to the world of pre-matured oxidization of white burgundies! The severe ones turned into sugar cane taste and totally undrinkable. Luckily this 2008 wasn’t as bad, we could still connect the dot. A total pleasure to have two blind bottles of La Cabotte showed up for dinner tonight, an absolute pleasure to be able to drink them side-by-side!