What does any reasonable wine lover expect from a good white Burgundy? Purity of fruit; a firm, yet harmonious, acidic backbone; a long finish where the fruity and salty combine for understated power; an elegant sense of ease; depending on age and origin you've every right to expect toppings of flint, sea salt, almonds, mushrooms.
You don't always get everything. You might only get, say purity without focus and power. Sometimes the blanket is stretched thin and you sense cracks and faults in the fabric. Maybe the wine could be more flavorsome or less foursquare, maybe you wish for more complexity or greater balance. With a great white Burgundy, you don't see the faults, maybe they were never there never there to begin with.
Lamy's wines are cloaked in a veil of greatness you can't or don't want to pierce. I don't know enough about Lamy or Saint-Aubin to tell you where to peg the Derrière Chez Edouard cru in the grand scheme of things. The only thing I remember about Lamy's wines is that his expensive Haute Densite parcels are the crown jewels you want to be able to afford. I read through my notes to get a sense of where to place what I was drinking in the Lamy hierarchy and learned that in the only vertical Lamy tasting I attended, Derrière Chez Edouard came off as the coolest wine. Maybe that explains the thrilling acidity and the vague hint of mint in the background.
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