Winemaker Notes
Red/purple robe with nose of black fruits. Very expressive and powerful.
Professional Ratings
-
Jasper Morris
An intense ruby purple. More concentration of the intense raspberry strawberry fruit. The Grasses Têtes is much tighter on the palate with a certain tannic austerity but such a concentration of fruit. Strawberry and raspberry together, definitely both dense and structured, will hold back until June before bottling. Drink from 2027-2032.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Vinous
The 2022 Marsannay Blanc Les Grasses Têtes has a slightly reductive but mineral-led bouquet that lends a fine edge and focus. The palate is very well-balanced with a slightly creamy, vanilla pod-tinged opening. It offers hints of hazelnut and caramel towards the poised and long finish - very complex and mercurial. Excellent.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The most serious of these four cuvées is the 2022 Marsannay Les Grasses Têtes, a medium to full-bodied, lively and concentrated wine evocative of blackberries, plums and dark chocolate. More primary at this stage in its élevage, it shows considerable promise.
Barrel Sample: 90-91
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.”
Perched up in the northernmost position in the Côte de Nuits, Marsannay is the only appellation village of Burgundy to produce classified wines of all three colors: red, white— and rosé. The official Rosé de Marsannay earned its high reputation in the early 1900s.
Its reds, made of Pinot Noir, burst with red and black fruit and are consistently long on the palate. Chardonnays from Marsannay are charming, floral and full of citrus fruit and mineral. Top Marsannay vineyards include Clos du Roy and Les Longeroies.