The saying, you get what you pay for, is truly one to be tested by the world of wine. Brought up in a communist household, the credo for us was, we all deserve the best. Early this year, a few of us went through a set of wines that, for one, made me realise that there’s a certain reason why the wines we drink sometimes can be the value of a small car. Secondarily, in contrast to another set of wines, it made it abundantly clear that pedigree and inherited wealth are about as much a reality as DNA is, but we don’t call it a science, as we’ve by now labeled it as luck. And we believe it’s just like that, or at least we’ve decided it to be so…
The 2002 Dujac Clos Saint Denis Grand Cru was that. It’s a world of ambivalence as you drink it, but the results speak for themselves, because there’s no denying you haven’t had anything like it. It defies logic. Dried orange peel, rooibos tea, forest after rain, and the finest berries you’ve had. It’s defined what that region is, but at the same time, it’s also about as predetermined as it gets, and that’s where it gets a little old.
