Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Tasted blind at the annual "Burgfest" tasting in Beaune. The 2012 Richebourg Grand Cru from A.F. Gros has a very fine bouquet, very expressive with vibrant, shimmering red berry fruit, cherry liqueur, boysenberries and marmalade. This is both complex and involving. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannin, beautifully poised and supple, elegant and utterly harmonious on the finish. The terroir and winemaking here exude Grand Cru quality. It's probably the best wine I have ever tasted from the estate and in a different league to some older vintages that I tasted from the domaine just a few days later.
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.”
The origin of perhaps the world’s very finest Pinot Noir, Côte de Nuits is the northern half of the Côte d'Or and includes the famous wine villages of Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-St-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée, Flagey-Echezeaux and Nuits-St-Georges.
Fine whites from Chardonnay are certainly found in the Côte de Nuits, but with much less frequency than top-performing reds made of Pinot noir. The little village of Nuits-St-Georges in its southern end gave the region its name: Côte de Nuits. The city of Dijon marks its northern border.