Winemaker Notes
Intense bouquet with aromas of red and black fruit, spices and a touch a oak. Rich and structured on the palate, this wine needs a bit of patience in order to reveal its raciness and great distinction.
Ideal pairings include venison, game birds, or full-flavored cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Fragrant with violet, black cherry, black currant, licorice, iron and spice aromas and flavors, this red is both powerful and restrained, with a supple texture and solid structure that are beautifully aligned, while the aftertaste lingers with echoes of dark fruit, mineral and spice. Best from 2024
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James Suckling
Powerful yet sleek with effusive, ripe black-cherry character. Silky front palate, then the serious tannins come through. No hint of the rusticity and edginess that you sometimes get from this appellation. More than enough fruit to make a completely convincing package. Bold finish. Drink or hold
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Le Corton Grand Cru confirms its superb showing from barrel, blossoming in the glass with scents of wild berries, peonies, violets, blood orange and warm spices. Medium to full-bodied, sumptuous and enveloping, with melting tannins, beautiful purity of fruit and lively balancing acids, it's long and perfumed, concluding with a saline, rose-inflected finish. I have never tasted a Corton from Bouchard that was so good, so young.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2019 Bouchard Père Fils Le Corton is charming, lively, and substantive. TASTING NOTES: This wine offers classic aromas and flavors of bright strawberries and an accent of oak. (Tasted: June 14, 2021, San Francisco, CA)
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Jasper Morris
A rather more evolved nose while the crushed strawberry note confirms whole bunch vinification – more was used than usual here in the circumstances of 2019. Perhaps this slightly smudges identification of the terroir. An agreeable red fruited wine nonetheless with good length.
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.”
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.