Winemaker Notes
Beautiful dark garnet-red color with purple tints. The nose is intense and empyreumatic with mild spices notes as cinnamon and nutmeg. Grassy and red fruits notes. On the palate the wine is ample with red fruits notes. Cinnamon and nutmeg notes. Silky tanins.
This wine will marvelously pair with peppered rib roast, beef filet mignon, lamb shoulder or rack of pork and cheeses as Tomme des Bauges.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
From a relatively large series of parcels covering 7.6 acres, this wine is well structured, with swathes of black fruits and firm tannins that will allow it to age. Soft, integrated tannins give the wine shape and aging potential. Drink from 2022.
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Decanter
This Clos du Roi is superb, with a pretty bouquet of red cherry, summer fruits and some meaty, earthy bass notes. On the palate the wine is supple, full-bodied and layered, with a fine but firm chassis of tannins, good concentration, and a succulent core of fruit.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Mercurey 1er Cru Clos du Roi is very promising, unfurling in the glass with notes of ripe cherries, plums, crushed cassis, licorice and candied citrus peel. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, ample and juicy, with the mid-palate amplitude that one associates with this site, structured around fine-grained stony tannins and juicy acids.
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.”
Beloved for its deep and flavorful reds made of Pinot Noir, Mercurey is the largest and most important village in the Côte Chalonnaise of Burgundy with most of its vineyards tucked away in hillsides or stretched along the aptly-named “Golden Valley.” This valley, sheltered from the moist and cool air that funnels along at lower elevations, is ideal for ripening Pinot noir.
Mercurey follows strict yield laws, similar to those at the Côte d’Or village level, promoting the development of deep, full, concentrated and age-worthy Pinot noirs. In their youth, a chewy and rich structure supports flavors of ripe strawberry, raspberry and cherry. Age brings notes of underbrush, tobacco and cocoa.
While Pinot Noir claims the majority of Mercurey vineyard acreage, Chardonnay does grow here and produces uniqely floral and spicey scented white wines.