Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Plump, brightly concentrated flavors of red cherries and raspberry preserves are sunny and piercing still in this library release tasted in November 2021. Sourced from Les Longeroies, a site undergoing review for premier cru status, this elevated Marsannay balances forward fruit with subtleties of tea leaf and sweet spice.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Marsannay Longeroies was all destemmed and brought up in one-third new French oak. It has a beautiful bouquet of ripe berry fruits, spring flowers, scorched earth, and forest floor and hits the palate with medium-bodied richness, integrated acidity, and a clean, classy, lightly textured style. It's not a blockbuster, but with its solid elegance, balance, and length, it’s an outstanding wine.
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Wine Spectator
A rich, fruity style, expressive with black currant and blackberry flavors framed by tar and spice. Dense tannins and vibrant acidity provide support. Drink now through 2024. 50 cases imported.
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.