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 François Parent winery circa 1930

So I decided to splurge today as it was a gorgeous (yet freezing!) day in New York with a bottle of 2004 François Parent Monthélie 1er Cru Les Duresses as a lunch wine for myself and a friend. Wines from Monthelie at top restaurants like Restaurant Daniel and Le Bernardin are often a value for the price, and the idea of a Pinot Noir with bright red fruit seemed like a great match for the crisp blue skies of the day.

Opening the bottle, it was as I predicted ... tart red cherry and pomegranate on the palate, very good balance, good concentration of fruit. As always, I tried to find tasting and winemaking notes on the web and was delighted to find the history of this winery, which dates back several generations and offers some very juicy information obviously culled from family journals, such as the family's habit of inviting Polish workers to pick the fruit, what they were paid, and the current owner/winemaker's memories of those days ...

"Here was Madam KOSZAREK, a woman of about forty years of age, who was the leader of the group and she did not speak French very well but she got by. She was their translator and their cook. Their dormitory was settled in the storeroom at the foot of the house at the end of street “La Métairie”, just in front of the main entrance of the yard. The cooking was done mainly with the use of the oven, which was situated at the entrance of the garden."

Apparently, Madame Koszarek was given provisions so as to prepare Polish food for the workers.

The Parent family was one of the earliest in the region to bottle their own wines and develop relationships with famous restaurants as well.

Fascinating website to read about the family yet I'm still searching the Internet for more information about the wine, such as exact residual sugar (did not seem to be much, perhaps five grams per litre) and more exact winemaking techniques than is listed.

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