2019 Belle Brise

It's raining wine.

Ok, so for the last couple years I've moved from purchasing most of my wine from a local store to working with wine merchants or specialty wine companies. I did this because they have access to a lot of uncommon wines that are really good and also don't have the triple markup of the 3 tier system.

One of the interesting things about this is that you often buy wine when the producer releases it or the wine merchant secures the contract, but that release may have happened in Italy or France and so it takes several months for it to get shipped into the US and clear customs and then it goes to an air conditioned warehouse and waits because you can only ship wine when the temperatures start to consistently get below 70 degrees. All that adds up to you buying a bottle of wine in February and it coming in the next year in April. I am currently in the throws of having a ton of wine delivered that was ordered as far back as February 2023.

One of these wines was the 2019 Belle Brise Bordeaux that we opened earlier this week. This is a right bank Bordeaux that is Merlot dominant and it stunned me. On the nose it smelled like a Pinot Noir with black cherry, tree bark, and black tea. The palate confirmed the nose with the addition of a very fine but present tannin structure and juicy acidity. Very smooth with no hard edges anywhere. 94-95 pts

If you've never heard of Belle Brise that's because it's a tiny 2 hectacre estate in Pomerol that sells almost all of it's wines to Michelin starred restaurants in Europe. Supposedly, 80% of Michelin starred restaurants in France have these wines on their menus. Honestly, I can see why. In very high end dining it's often more about unique exposures and daring risk-taking and this wine is totally unexpected based on where it's from and what Bordeaux supposedly tastes like.

Interestingly, I've been told that told school Bordeaux back in the 60s and before was more Burgundian like this and that current Bordeaux was heavily influenced by the success of Napa Valley and it's big, rich wines. Anyways, had you blinded me, I would have been confident this wine was a red Burgundy. Just really cool.