The Clos de la Roche 1933, Jules Belin, is the oldest Burgundy I have
ever had. I bought it at auction over 20 years ago. The fill was good
for the age(about 1 3/4 in. below the cork). The cork was still
holding, but it was very heavy and slid out easily. I was afraid it
might crumble. It was imported by Dreyfus Ashby in NYC, a firm that
has been around a long time. I suspect it was imported after WW II, as
many wines imported in the 30s just after prohibition ended have
special import permit etc data mentioned on the label or on stamps.
Since this era was in the middle of the great depression, many
companies had much more wine than they could sell at the time. After
WW II, quite a bit of prewar French wine came on the US market for
several years. Most of the years in Bordeaux and Burgundy in the 30s
were awful to not very interesting. The 1930, 31, 32 Burgundy wines
were for the most part awful from the start, and you would be lucky to
find one today that is still drinkable. Both the 33 and 34 vintages
were very good, but the 33 vintage was very small.Unlike today, only a
small amount of top Burgundy was domain bottled in the 30s. One hears
stories of how some houses "improved" Burgundy back then, but I have
not seen proof and mention of which houses did this. I know nothing
about Jules Belin other than you see this house name on several older
bottles of Burgundy. The cork was labeled on the side with Jules
Belin, Premeaux, Cote d'Or.

The wine is now fairly light scarlet with a bit of onion skin around
the rim. There is no hint of oxidation. The bouquet is quite intense
and complex with dark fruit, a touch of earth, truffles, and a hint of
leather and even a floral component. The wine once likely was much
darker because there is a lot of dark sediment in the bottle. Acid is
correct, and the wine is rather smooth. The taste is not as intense as
it likely once was, but it is very clean with much complexity. There
still is a hint of dryish tannins - I am not for sure if they come
from stems, more press wine perhaps used back then or what. In
summary, this old Burgundy still is drinking well.