Winemaker Notes
A racy wine, with a dill touch. This wine is very powerful and length.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Notions of plums, sweet berry fruit, spices and orange rind introduce Lorenzon's 2019 Mercurey 1er Cru Champs Martin Rouge, a medium to full-bodied, deep and perfumed wine that's lively and concentration, with melting tannins and a long, sapid finish. While it's immensely charming today, the results of this vertical tasting make me suspect that, in 15 years, my review will seem very conservative.
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James Suckling
This perfumed red has aromas of violets, braised mushrooms and raspberries. It’s juicy and ripe on the palate with a light earthiness, medium body and integrated tannins.
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.”
Beloved for its deep and flavorful reds made of Pinot Noir, Mercurey is the largest and most important village in the Côte Chalonnaise of Burgundy with most of its vineyards tucked away in hillsides or stretched along the aptly-named “Golden Valley.” This valley, sheltered from the moist and cool air that funnels along at lower elevations, is ideal for ripening Pinot noir.
Mercurey follows strict yield laws, similar to those at the Côte d’Or village level, promoting the development of deep, full, concentrated and age-worthy Pinot noirs. In their youth, a chewy and rich structure supports flavors of ripe strawberry, raspberry and cherry. Age brings notes of underbrush, tobacco and cocoa.
While Pinot Noir claims the majority of Mercurey vineyard acreage, Chardonnay does grow here and produces uniqely floral and spicey scented white wines.