Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2013 Bouchard Père & Fils Vigne de L'Enfant Jésus is an ultra-rich Beaune Grèves. TASTING NOTES: This wine is dramatic and compelling. Enjoy its concentrated red and black fruit aromas and flavors with well-seasoned lamb dishes. (Tasted: March 3, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine & Spirits
This 9.7-acre parcel in Beaune Grèves produces one of Bouchard’s most renowned wines, one that often takes ten years to fully develop. It’s a wine with grand cru stature, treated to between 30 and 40 percent new oak. The elegance and delicacy of the wine is immediately apparent, though the flavors are shuttered behind the tough austerity of the tannins. The flavor concentration and detail becomes more expressive with air—a scent of rose petals, a buzz of earthy spice, a precise and lithe shape to the structure. A lovely, ethereal 2013.
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James Suckling
A very long and pretty red with roses and strawberry character. Flowers too. Full to medium-bodied, tight and chewy. Needs time to open. Drink now or hold.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
While the city represents the epicenter of wine production in Burgundy, the term, “Beaune” also refers to the specific sub-appellation of the greater Côte de Beaune, whose vineyards climb up the pastoral slopes that border the city to its west. Originally founded as a Roman camp by Julius Caesar, the city of Beaune eventually became the seat of the dukes of Burgundy until the 13th century. Today it is home to top négociants such as Louis Jadot, Joseph Drouhin, Louis Latour, and Bouchard Père et Fils.
The appellation, dominated by Pinot Noir plantings, represents a lovely and charming place to begin to understand red Burgundy. Its sandy soils create light and supple, floral driven Pinot Noir. These wines are designed to be enjoyed within five to 10 years. The vineyards of Beaune span a broad swath of Premier Crus from Savigny-lès-Beaune to its border with Pommard.
Chardonnay acreage here has been increasing here in the more recent years.