Winemaker Notes
It expresses a very beautiful maturity despite a year not so bright. The note and palate are correlated to the nature of the soil in Mercurey Les Montots: Clay-limestone with iron presence.
This gives to the wine a racy, chiselled nose with chalky notes of cooked red fruits. On the palate, the wine is astonishingly supple and silky on first approach whilst the tannins are more presents on the finish lengthening the tasting and leave a powerful impression. A great wine with ageing potential.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
From a 1.6ha site, with 50-year-old vines and a full south exposition. 60% of the fruit is fermented as whole clusters in open-top wood fermenters, to produce this wine with a lovely plummy fruit, supple yet firm tannins and the density to carry it to a lingering finish. Very successful.
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Wine Spectator
Bright and packed with black cherry, blackberry and violet flavors, this red is silky and harmonious. Firms up a little on the lingering, spicy finish, but this is all about the lush fruit and supple texture. Drink now.
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.