Winemaker Notes
This wine is “Grands” before being Échézeaux. It is a country gentleman, aristocrat and dreamer, who idles willingly with the unhurried step of his horse in a forest filled with the scents of sundry mushrooms, mosses, decaying leaves and of furtive small game, which spill forth in a multitude of shifting alliances. All of that is expressed with feeling, in a refined language: musical, concise and pure like the message of a Mozart quartet.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
The Echezeaux in bottle still displays its youthful dense purple colour, more vibrant than the Corton. The strawberry notes swell across the bouquet, generous, ripe yet fine and fresher in style than the Corton. There is a starburst of energy, more raspberry now, at the front of the palate, then a long and nuanced finale. The fruit fills out the oak, splendid, lengthy, detailed and refined. Very persistent.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2019 Echezeaux Grand Cru is a bigger, richer wine that pushes on the ripeness scale, offering a monster bouquet of red and black fruits, licorice, spice, and roasted herb-like nuances, with a kiss of violets emerging with time in the glass. Needing plenty of air to show at its best, it's full-bodied and concentrated on the palate, with a much broader, more expansive, and hedonistic style. However, its balance and precision lag the 2018, and this is a beast of wine that could be mistaken for a Grenache at this young stage. It’s going to take some time to shed its considerable baby fat and should have two decades or more of longevity.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Deeper pitched than the domaine's Corton, the 2019 Échézeaux Grand Cru exhibits aromas of blackberries, plums, exotic spices, orange rind and rose hips. Full-bodied, rich and ample, its broad, textural attack segues into a deep and concentrated mid-palate and a long, saline finish. This is a sensual, enveloping, elegantly muscular Échézeaux that has fulfilled all the promise it showed in barrel.
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Decanter
With a deeper, more vividly purple hue than the Corton, there is an abundance of blackberry fruit on the nose, with power, density and concentration on the palate, highlighting the later harvest. Although there is plenty of weight, the palate stays beautifully fresh with fine tannins and an intriguing garrigue-like hint on the finish. It has plenty of ageing potential. Harvested on 22 and 23 September, these were the last Pinot vines to be picked at the domaine.
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.