Winemaker Notes
Aromas of red berries dominated by luscious cherries. Elegance, freshness and minerality are the main characteristics of this excellent Premier Cru.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Mingling aromas of sweet berry fruit and cherries with hints of forest floor, black truffle, burning embers and warm spices, Rousseau's 2020 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Lavaux Saint-Jacques is medium to full-bodied, lively and concentrated, with an especially intense, tightly wound profile for a cuvée that's often rather delicate. Concluding with a long, penetrating finish, it shows considerable potential.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Jasper Morris
An even mid purple colour. Balanced fruit along with a fair amount of oak. Then a reductive rather than bacterial note gets involved. Reduction because clean on the palate, a mix of red and black fruit. A certain sternness shows, from the reduction. This is even so a good wine and when the fruit resurfaces more may well merit a higher score.
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Vinous
The 2020 Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaux Saint-Jacques ler Cru is another reductive wine on the nose, showing brambly red fruit, briar and light loamy scents. It unfolds nicely with aeration, but it's still keeping something back. It gains delineation after a rigorous glass-to-glass decant. The palate is medium-bodied with gritty tannins. More austere and structured than its peers, some whole bunches lend a conspicuous pepperiness. It's maybe a little Morey-like towards the finish.
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.”
This small village is home to the Grands Crus in the farthest northerly stretches of Côte de Nuits and is famous for some of the deepest and firmest Burgundian Pinot Noir.
Gevrey boasts nine Grands Crus, the best of which are arguably Le Chambertin and Chambertin-Clos de Bèze. As with all of the fragmented vineyards of Burgundy, it isn’t easy to differentiate between the two, which are situated adjacent with Clos de Bèze slightly further up the hill than Le Chambertin. Clos de Bèze has a shallower soil and if you’re really counting, may produce wines less intense but more likely to charm. Some compare Le Chambertin in both power and plentitude only to the prized Romanée-Conti Grand Cru farther south in Vosne-Romanée.
Two other Grands Crus vineyards, Mazis-Chambertin (also written Mazy-) and Latricières-Chambertin command almost as much regard as Le Chambertin and Chambertin-Clos de Bèze. The upper part of Mazy, called Les Mazis Haut is the best and Latricières-Chambertin offers an abundance of juicy fruit and a silky texture in the warmer vintages.
Other Grands Crus are Ruchottes-Chambertin, Charmes-Chambertin, Mazoyères-Chambertin, Griotte-Chambertin and Chapelle-Chambertin.
The most respected Pinot Noir wines from Gevrey-Chambertin are robust and powerful but at the same time, velvety and expressive: black fruit, black liquorice and chocolate come into play. After some time in the bottle, the wines are harmonious with bright and sometimes candied fruit, and aromas of musk, truffle and forest floor. These have staying power.