Winemaker Notes
The Domaine's Grands Crus are matured in oak barrels (80% new barrels) made from wood from the Allier and Nivernais regions. The domaine favors light to medium-plus toasts as this ensures the perfect harmony between the wine and wood tannins. Limpid and brilliant, the Domaine's Chapelle-Chambertin has a woody vanilla nose with a slight floral touch. On the palate, its controlled and subtle tannins ensure elegance, subtlety and a majestic quality and its aromatic subtlety suggests fruit, spices and wood. Its pure features convey plenty of style. The tannins are tender and supple. However, we are brought back to order by its complexity and mineral liveliness on the finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Chapelle-Chambertin Grand Cru has a beautiful bouquet with crushed violet aromas infusing the blueberry and black cherry fruit, hints of blood orange emerging with time in the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with a little chewiness on the entry. There is good density and weight here with fresh dark cherries and blackcurrant, though I would like to see more finesse and precision come through on the finish to compete with the exemplars from this vineyard.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Wine Spectator
A mix of black cherry, black currant, iron and violet aromas and flavors are the hallmarks of this powerful red. Vibrant and exuberant, with dense tannins lining the crisp finish. Best from 2021 through 2033. 16 cases imported.
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.