Further to Stephen Browett's blog "Kiwi Chardonnay takes on the World" of August this year, we are happy to post these notes from Paul Brajkovic of Kumeu River on a similar theme.
Leflaive vs Kumeu River
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We often think the best match with good white Burgundy is crayfish and we are lucky that Milan has a friend that likes to swap wine for crayfish. Depending on the market price of the crays we normally get a case of crays for 1 or 2 cases of Kumeu River. Last week we received a box of 18 live crayfish (perfect size for two people or one person if you are greedy).
live cray
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They arrived on Friday afternoon so we decided to taste the 2005 Leflaive Le Pucelles alongside the Hunting Hill 2006 and 2007 while we cooked the crayfish. We also nibbled on some of the legs as each batch of crays came out of the pot.
Quality Control
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We think Hunting Hill is the perfect crayfish wine and eating these crays with these wines was lovely. The Leflaive is excellent and while initially quite closed did open up. It is fragrant with a hint of oxidative characters; very supple on the palate and very fine. While this is premier cru we all thought the Village Meursault from Coche that we tasted a week earlier was better.
dinner time
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We may be biased but we did think both Hunting Hill wines were more precise and tight and definitely stood up to the Leflaive. The 2007 in particular.