Start as I mean to go on

The first day of a new month, a new blog and a damned good bottle of Burgundy.

Sylvain Cathiard Nuits St Georges Premier Cru Murgers 1999:

Cathiard makes beautiful Vosne-Romanée wines for lovers of beautiful Burgundy. He is the best source of the Vosne Premier Cru Malconsorts, although sadly for your humble narrator once the wines hit Blighty they are mind-numbingly expensive. Hence I was rather pleased to pick up a few bottles of this for less than thirty pounds a bottle. A damned good Nuits it is too. It has Nuits power and is not short of acidity, but has lovely exotic, complex fruit that does remind one of Vosne wines very much. The fruit character was really pleasing, and it lingered on the finish for a very long time. Despite the reputation of Nuits for beefy and tannic wines this was terribly satisfying to drink now. It would have aged very well, but it was not in the least bit hard. After an hour in a decanter my partner and I finished this faster than a smoker gets to the smoking area after a trans-Atlantic flight. Lovely wine.

Burgundy is obviously one of the most pleasing red wines. Not only can it be analysed in intellectual terms, but also they are often (if one buys carefully) lovely, sexy, hedonistic wines that almost beg one to do something amorous after a couple of glasses. I do like Burgundy.