Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Maréchaudes is from the bottom of the hill of Corton, below Bressandes, and tends to produce more accessible, fruit-driven wines. It was vinified with more than 50% whole cluster fruit this year, which lends pleasant floral lift to a complex bouquet of wild berries, plum and potpourri. On the palate the wine is silky, multidimensional and full-bodied, with excellent amplitude and depth, and a penetrating, sapid, almost saline finish. This seems quite open-knit this year despite its evident seriousness - it's a vintage to drink before the domaine’s brooding but profound 2015 comes around.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Bursting with aromas of dark berries, blood orange, rich soil and sapid nuances, the 2016 Corton Les Maréchaudes Grand Cru is full-bodied, satiny and layered, with a deep core of fruit, chalky structuring tannins and a somewhat chunky profile that reflects its situation at the bottom of the hill of Corton's grand cru sector.
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.”
A classic source of exceptional Chardonnay as well as Pinot Noir, the Côte de Beaune makes up the southern half of the Côte d’Or. Its principal wine-producing villages are Pernand-Vergelesses, Aloxe-Corton, Beaune, Pommard, Volnay, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet.
The area is named for its own important town of Beaune, which is essentially the center of the Burgundy wine business and where many negociants center their work. Hospices de Beaune, the annual wine auction, is based here as well.