Pinball Number Count: Bouchard Père 1923-2013

BY NEAL MARTIN | APRIL 16, 2025

“One two three four five, six seven eight nine ten, eleven twelve.”

These lyrics will be familiar to kids on both sides of the Atlantic who sat in front of the gogglebox to watch “Sesame Street.” Having never travelled to the United States, this seminal kids’ educational program, first aired in 1969 and going strong today, was my peephole into a fantastical land where I might go to the supermarket and meet the Six Million Dollar Man, Red Hand Gang or Eric and Ernie. The segment that is indelibly imprinted upon my malleable brain, both visually and audibly, is the “Pinball Number Count” that taught viewers numbers one to twelve. The surreal animated sequence of a shiny pinball ricocheting around the machine heightened anticipation until that episode’s number was revealed. I bet you never knew that the vocals for the show’s stone-cold killer, funky, jazz-tinged soundtrack were performed by the legendary Pointer Sisters long before “Jump” or “I’m So Excited.”

When we next congregate at Château de Beaune for a numerically themed dinner of Bouchard Père’s wines, I will recommend playing the “Pinball Number Count” theme. We could all join in and shout out the number. Last year, we learned about the number two courtesy of a 1952 Corton-Charlemagne, an 1892 Beaune and a dozen or so others. This year, the theme was, you guessed it, the magic number three.   

It was the same format. The two Frédérics, which sounds like a pair of tenors rather than Groupe Artémis CEO Frédéric Engerer and head winemaker Frédéric Weber, raided Bouchard Père’s treasure trove of back vintages that accreted over decades. All bottles were served blind and, as it turned out, not necessarily from Bouchard Père, since, unbeknownst to guests, Engerer smuggled in bottles from stablemates Domaine d’Eugénie and Clos de Tart. This is not a showcase for Bouchard Père, no greatest hits compilation. There is a higher cause: to intermix the greats with less trodden vineyards and, in particular, no-go vintages. An evening of contrast and consanguinity. This tasting is akin to a large family gathering, with long-lost relatives convening and looking each other up and down, from adolescents to great-grandparents, plus the odd grumpy uncle.

The evening was almost over before it began. Arriving later than other guests after a busy day at the proverbial “office,” I found the entry door locked. Standing on tiptoe, I could see dinner guests milling about the orangerie with pre-prandial glasses of Champagne, but the doorbell made no sound. Waving my arms like a lunatic in the dark street was in vain. I tried several other doors, all locked. In the end, I spotted a friend and sent an emergency text. Fortunately, his mobile was switched on.

This is an article where the tasting notes speak for themselves, but a couple of observations:

Firstly, you can make great wine from even the most disparaged growing season. I recently read Antonio Galloni’s Barolo 2021 report, where he wrote about the danger of winemakers relying too much on data and not enough on actually tasting the wines. I concur. Fine wine is not a standardized product dictated by the growing season or winemaking technique. To use a sporting analogy, knowledge of such background information sets the bar and governs how high or low we predict a wine will perform. Yet we know all too well that the high jumper might fluff their run-up and crash into the bar or simply sail over it with ease. What determines the outcome of any wine depends on a multitude of factors whose inter-relationships remain partially known and do not necessarily comport to statistics or scientific analyses.

A cursory glance at meteorological data pertaining to a vintage like 1963 implies that no wine from the mid-1960s would be worth drinking, let alone after six decades. Yet up trotted the 1963 Volnay Caillerets Ancienne Cuvée Carnot and it was sublime. This is a vintage when flowering did not finish until the end of July, summer was a damp squib, and then, despite an Indian summer, there was insufficient warmth to fully ripen what was a large crop. Some growers did not finish picking until November that year. The 1963 Savigny-lès-Beaune Les Lavières did not quite pass muster, but it was certainly no write-off. That is the magic, the enigma, the unpredictability of wine, and long may that continue. Also, I must mention the 1973 Montrachet Grand Cru, another supposedly poor season due to excessively high yields. As pointed out at dinner, the whites that year might have lacked ambition but have cruised along without falling apart.

Secondly, whatever Bouchard Père was doing in Corton-Charlemagne in the 1950s, they were doing it right. Last year, the 1952 Corton-Charlemagne snatched wine of the night, and this year, the 1953 Corton-Charlemagne was cut from a similar cloth, so complex and mineral-driven, undimmed by the passing years. The head winemaker at that time was Joseph Bouchard, father of Christophe Bouchard, who was born in 1922 and tragically died in an accident in 1965. Weber later told me that Joseph Bouchard was extremely respected. The wines made during his tenure are a testament to a talent cut short.

Perhaps one takeaway from the wines is that beauty can be found irrespective of age. I found the first and youngest wine, the 2013 Chevalier-Montrachet, delectable by dint of its elegance and refinement. Similarly, the oldest wine (after they could find nothing suitable from the 19th century), the 1923 Beaune Clos de la Mousse, was astonishing for its ineffable complexity, grace and purity. It was a pertinent reminder of how the most propitious parcels in the Beaune appellation can vie with more illustrious appellations like Vosne-Romanée or Gevrey-Chambertin. This was one of my wines of the year.

Not everything hit the spot, ineluctable when chained to numerical vintages. The 1983 Montrachet was compromised by that year’s notoriously wet weather, though it had an intriguing petrol scent that was probably a result of botrytis in the vines. When it came to the 2003 Clos de Tart, I was unimpressed and vocally tore it apart. Overripe and burdened by excessive cassis scents that rendered the palate one-dimensional, I found this almost sacrilegious given the monopole in question, even taking into account that year’s torrid heat. This resulted in a heated cross-table debate with wine writer Michel Bettane, who argued, in his own inimitable way, that the absence of Burgundian traits is precisely what makes it special. I rejoindered that if a wine bears no trace, no semblance of what it should be, then it has forsaken its raison d’être? Just go buy an alternative at a fraction of the price that will give you identical sensory pleasure. Suffice it to say that some guests were shocked by my outburst. However, in the presence of such bottles and with knowledge gathered around the table, surely there should be open debate and dialectic as to what constitutes a great wine.

Frédéric Weber kindly sent me information pertaining to the vintages in question in terms of harvest date and so forth.

I will leave it there. The evening was a testament to the treasures that slumber in Bouchard Père’s cellars. It was a privilege to drink bottles of such antiquity, bottles that had gathered dust in the same bin where they were placed sometimes decades ago. It proved the majesty of great vineyards like Corton-Charlemagne and Montrachet, but also that a well-made wine from more modest vineyards can deliver just as much magic. Few exercises compare to learning to count as a kid or drinking history as a grown-up. Just as these wines from Bouchard Père have outlived many of their peers, so “Sesame Street” has outlived practically every kids’ program. 

© 2025, Vinous. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or redistributed without prior consent from Vinous. Doing so is not only a violation of our copyright but also threatens the survival of independent wine criticism.

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