Winemaker Notes
This wine has magnificent color and red berry aromas. The nose offers a great aromatic bouquet with black berries and spicy notes. The palate is dense, complex and well-structured, offering black berries aromas and silky tannins.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Slightly dark ruby/purple-colored, the 2016 Pommard Clos Des Epenots 1Er Cru offers a more backward, reticent bouquet of dark fruits, ground herbs, earth, and spice, with a terrific crushed rock and gunpowder-like minerality. Rich, medium-bodied, nicely concentrated, and textured, it needs 2-4 years of bottle age and will keep for over a decade.
Rating: 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.”
Representing some of the darkest, deepest and sturdiest Pinot Noir of Burgundy, Pommard is one of the two villages in Côte de Beaune—along with Volnay—that is recognized for its impressive Pinot Noir. While it can’t boast any Grands Crus vineyards, its extraordinary Premiers Crus vineyards are aplenty.
Les Pézerolles, Les Épenots, Clos des Épeneaux, Les Chanlins, Les Jarolières, Les Fremiers and particularly Les Rugiens are among the most outstanding Premiers Crus.
The best Pommards will be concentrated in flavors such as black cherry, blackberry and dark chocolate, have dazzling aromas of violets, menthol or wild herbs and a firm and powerful finish. They typically demand some time in the bottle to reach their peak.