Winemaker Notes
This wine offers fruit aromas combined with a musky note and a delicate oaky hint on the nose, while the palate is firm, well-built, full-bodied, and elegant, giving it great personality and good aging potential, and it pairs beautifully with game, red meat dishes in sauce, and cheese.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A fine success for this cooler site (which tends to deliver age-worthy wines), the 2020 Beaune 1er Cru Les Marconnets exhibits aromas of wild berries, loamy soil, orange rind and spices. Medium to full-bodied, lively and precise, it's tauter and more vibrant than Bouchard's fleshier, richer Beaune premiers crus from southeasterly exposed sites.
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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.