Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Echezeaux Grand Cru comes from 80-year-old vines and it is being raised in 80% new oak. It has a delightful, feminine bouquet with hints of white chocolate infusing the red berry fruit profile. It is a playful, quite joyful nose. The palate is well-balanced with fine tannins and a mixture of red and black fruit on the entry. It gathers weight towards the middle and then just steps off the gas towards the linear finish. It maintains fine balanced and there is an attractive tobacco note on the long aftertaste. Three to five barriques produced this year. Barrel Sample: 89-91
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.”
Claiming the two famous Grand Crus, Echezeaux and Grands Echezeaux, the identity of this village, Flagey-Echezeaux, rides predominantly on the glory of those two crus. All of the village or Premier Cru status vineyards in Flagey-Echezeaux market themselves under the name of their neighbor, Vosne-Romanée.
Echezeaux Pinot noir tends be light, bright and full of finesse, whereas those of Grands Echezeaux typically have more heft and complexity.