Winemaker Notes
Critical Acclaim
All Vintages
In the vineyard, Christophe Roumier prefers a high vine age and rigorous pruning, resulting in small yields. In the winery, all aspects of the Roumier vinification are completely traditional: a very warm, 18 day maceration, use of 25% new wood barrels (with a slightly higher percentage for the Grands Crus), and egg white fining. Since 1988 the domaine has discontinued the practice of filtration, and the entire cellar has been air-conditioned, allowing a 4-5 day pre-fermentation maceration of grapes.
Domaine Georges Roumier is one of the finest sources of classic, long-lived red Burgundies, with wines that demonstrate fruit, spice, and balance, with substantial tannins. Simply put, Roumier wines are brilliantly made. They are rich, fragrant wines with characteristic aromas of cherries and berries, and often need 4-5 years to show their great depth and harmony. They are also very long-lived, lasting up to twenty years.
The origin of perhaps the world’s very finest Pinot Noir, Côte de Nuits is the northern half of the Côte d'Or and includes the famous wine villages of Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-St-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée, Flagey-Echezeaux and Nuits-St-Georges.
Fine whites from Chardonnay are certainly found in the Côte de Nuits, but with much less frequency than top-performing reds made of Pinot noir. The little village of Nuits-St-Georges in its southern end gave the region its name: Côte de Nuits. The city of Dijon marks its northern border.
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.”