Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 Domaine Chandon de Briailles Corton Grand Cru is worthy of the high accolades. TASTING NOTES: This wine is built, layered, and long. Enjoy its aromas and flavors of fully-ripened apples, lovely peach, and oak accents with steamed shellfish in savory cream sauces. (Tasted: October 28, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Opening with aromas of waxy lemon rind, pasty cream and dried white flowers, the 2017 Corton Grand Cru Blanc is medium-bodied, tensile and tight-knit, with impressive concentration, length and structural integrity despite its ripeness. As usual, the vast majority of this cuvée derives from Corton Bressandes.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Wine Spectator
Butterscotch, vanilla, pear and smoke aromas and flavors showcase this elegant white, intensified by the vivid structure. Spice and toast notes play out on the lingering aftertaste. Best from 2021 through 2028.
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.