Winemaker Notes
This wine offers a concentrated palate of dark fruits, with gamey nuances and bramble hints, wrapped in a structured yet velvety texture. It's a wine of depth and character,
Professional Ratings
-
Decanter
On release, the Grands Echézeaux shares the somewhat pale hue of the Echézeaux, yet it is aromatically richer, with more sweet pomegranate fruit on the initial attack. While still noticeable, the cask ageing is well-integrated, and the wine is more substantial and longer than its neighbour on the palate. The domaine protected parts of the vineyard with candles, which helped the yield and delivered a lusher result despite being picked a week earlier. This wine impresses even more now than it had out of barrel. Picked 23 September; 8,899 bottles produced.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Grands Échézeaux Grand Cru is deeper pitched and denser than the Echézeaux. Mingling aromas of wild berries and plums with notions of sweet spices, incense and rose petals, it's full-bodied, broad and textural, with an almost unctuous attack that segues into a layered mid-palate that's framed by sweet, powdery tannins that assert themselves on the long, sapid finish. This is always a wine built for the long haul, and the 2021 is no exception.
-
Vinous
The 2021 Grands-Echézeaux Grand Cru was picked on September 23 and 24 at 21.6hL/ha, which is more than the Echézeaux. Initially, nosing the two aforementioned wines, they seem uncharacteristically neck-and-neck and with similar fruit profiles. Then, it opens with aeration, just eases down on the accelerator pedal, red berry fruit deepening and joined by scents of forest floor, hints of morels and Earl Grey. Superb delineation and focus. The palate is certainly much deeper and more harmonious than the Echézeaux, with raspberry, cranberry, white pepper and just a touch of graphite. This has more dimension to it and definitely much more persistence on the finish, even if not the most concentrated Grands Echézeaux. Wonderful, though it deserves longer in bottle. 742 cases produced.
-
Jasper Morris
A little paler, perhaps more evolved in colour, than the Echezeaux. The spice and the red fruit seeming in equal proportions at first sniff. The Grands Echezeaux comes across as more monolithic than the Echezeaux on first sight, much less giving in its bouquet. The raspberries on the palate are just that little bit darker, the pepper notably insistent. Brooding is the word, with good length and nicely interwoven acidity. Just a little hard to see exactly how this will develop at the moment. With time the wine seems to draw out further behind, suggesting that it is in a state of arrested adolescence.
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.