Two Bottles Renaud Boyer
We drink a bottle of En Attendant Riaux Pinot Noir 2020 and a bottle of Les Riaux Chardonnay 2021 from Renaud Boyer of Burgundy.
Although Renaud Boyer comes from a wine-grower family, he wanted to earn his money in engineering before becoming a winegrower. But when he was offered vineyards from his cousin for rent, he took the opportunity and moved into his grandfather’s cellar. And he has stayed there ever since. The vineyards offered to him had been cultivated organically since the 80s, so they fit well with Renaud’s idea of making wine. Meanwhile, his grapes grow on about 3 hectares of land distributed in Burgundy. When making wine, he completely avoids sulfur, filtering and fining are also not performed. We try the base in red and white. The Pinot Noir En Attendant Riaux 2020 is filled as Coteaux Bourguignons. The red wines at Renaud Boyer are fermented with stalk and stem for about three weeks before being aged in wooden barrels for at least a year. The Chardonnay Les Riaux from 2021 is pressed directly for a few hours and then also aged on the lees in wooden barrels.
The Chardonnay is quite spicy from the first sniff. There are nutty aromas and a bit of bitter citrus fruit, according to the better half it is definitely pomelo. I eat that rather rarely, she often, so I rely on the judgment. On the first sip, not much happens aromatically at first, but all the more in the mouthfeel. It feels cool, very clear and straightforward with an enormous pull and a lot of juiciness that slowly fades out on a small bitter scratch at the back. And although it starts off juicy, the wine becomes even juicier with air. It gets better and better and now does in the mouth about what very freshly squeezed orange juice does on the tongue. Only the aromatics are brighter than with orange juice. But since I also rarely drink lemon or lime juice pure, the orange juice has to do as a comparison.
Overnight, the wine becomes a little creamier, a little more wood comes along. The energy in the wine, the freshness and the clarity are still really good. And to that the crazy juiciness, both in terms of overflowing saliva and in terms of the memory of actual juice, are still fully there. It seems somehow extremely young, but it is so much fun that you don’t think long about how it would age. Really a great wine.
I would have liked to end on this note, but curiosity where this could go tempts me, as with countless wines before, to save a small sip into the third evening. But then it decides overnight against further development and for oxidation. Although technically speaking this is also a kind of further development. The great bright color has given way to a rather sad brown tone and the freshness has completely disappeared. This is the first time this has happened to me and it is extremely unfortunate that it happened here of all places. There was no more or less in the bottle than with many other third evenings, so I don’t think it was due to too small a remainder. And since the wine was just as fresh and clean on the second evening as on the first evening, this development honestly comes as quite a surprise. Now it’s time to suppress that experience and remember the first two evenings. They were really good after all.
The Pinot Noir has only cherry in the nose at the very first smell. But that gets darker and earthier in the first moments. It smells a bit planty and also a bit like marzipan. What was pretty one-dimensional for the first two or three moments becomes more and more complex and interesting. Then I am quite unprepared for the hit of the first sip. Boy does that pull. The Chardonnay was already blessed with a lively acidity, but the Pinot just passes by easily. We drink the wine at summer temperatures and there it is a perfect partner, because what the acidity is not, is exhausting. It’s just so fresh.
Overnight, then the cherry comes out more again and it gets softer in the nose. And after you have briefly wondered if that would also be like that when drinking, the acidity brings you back to reality. That has slowly moved towards natural wine in the fridge and feels like it’s about to jump off the natural cliff. If you like to put a handful of red currants in your mouth in early summer, you should be able to imagine well what that does with your taste buds. There are a few days in the year when I celebrate that. There are other days in the year when I run away screaming. Fortunately there is then the better half who explains to me how delicious and juicy that is. And to be honest, the contrast between the red fruit with a hint of velvety structure in the nose and then the acidity galloping over your tongue has its very own charm.