Winemaker Notes
Intense bouquet with aromas of fruit and toast married to mineral notes typical of this appellation. Rich and powerful wine with an assertive personality.
Pairs well with fish and shellfish in sauce and foie gras.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Very complex nose of lemon curd, tangerine and violets. So cool and precise, with excellent concentration, but not a gram of fat on its muscular body, this is a marathon-runner white Burgundy. Intense, chalky minerality is married to restrained creaminess at the dangerously fresh, long finish. From a 3.65-hectare plot at 320 meters altitude on the east-facing side of this site.
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Wine Spectator
A well-toned white hallmarked by floral, lemon, pear, stone and baking spice aromas and flavors. Creamy and builds across the palate, ending with a spicy aftertaste of lemon curd and stone. Best from 2025 through 2035.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Aromas of orange oil, peach, confit citrus, freshly baked bread, beeswax and white flowers preface the 2020 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru, a full-bodied, layered and concentrated wine that's deep and muscular, with a rich but tensile profile and a long, chalky finish.
Barrel Sample: 92-94
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Jasper Morris
A rich bright heady nose, some alcohol, teetering on the heady. Here the fruit wins over the oak, there is a saline note and quite a good body of fruit.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
Prevailing over the charming village of Aloxe, the hill of Corton actually commands the entire appellation. Corton is the only Grand Cru for Pinot Noir in the entire Côte de Beaune. Its Grand Crus red wines can be described simply as “Corton” or Corton hyphenated with other names. These vineyards cover the southeast face of the hill of Corton where soils are rich in red chalk, clay and marl.
Dense and austere when young, the best Corton Pinot Noir will peak in complexity and flavor after about a decade, offering some of the best rewards in cellaring among Côte de Beaune reds. Pommard and Volnay offer similar potential.
The great whites of the village are made within Corton-Charlemagne, a cooler, narrow band of vineyards at the top of the hill that descends west towards the village of Pernand-Vergelesses. Here the thin and white stony soils produce Chardonnay of exceptional character, power and finesse. A minimum of five years in bottle is suggested but some can be amazing long after. Fully half of Aloxe-Corton is considered Grand Cru.