Winemaker Notes
A lovely, brilliant crimson color. A very earthy Nuits nose with some vanilla bean, too. On the palate, smoky, velvet-textured fruit without any tannin, but acids take their place, so the wine is nicely balanced. Not heavy, but a very elegant Pinot expression at the end.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Exotic scents of violet, raspberry and wild cherry mark this juicy red. Vivid and fruity, yet backed by a baseline of firm tannins. Shows fine balance and a lingering aftertaste of red berries and mineral. Best from 2022 through 2038.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 Domaine Henri Gouges Nuits-Saint-Georges shows how delicate, firm, and well-built NSG can be. TASTING NOTES: This wine comes right at you with plenty of power and excellent finesse. Pair its strength with a juicy, grilled ribeye. (Tasted: May 6, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Jeb Dunnuck
The village 2017 Nuits-Saint-Georges from Gouges is a beautiful wine that shows the warmer, sun-kissed style of the vintage nicely while still having plenty of crisp, almost crunchy fruit. Notes of red cherries, strawberries, and cranberries give way to more spice and hints of spring flowers with time in the glass, and it hits the palate with medium-bodied richness, nicely integrated acidity, light tannins, and terrific overall balance. This is a lovely Village level wine that has impressive richness as well as length. It’s going to evolve nicely for 10-15 years.
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.”
Inhabiting the bottom end of the northern half of the Côte d’Or, Nuits-St-Georges is a busy, market-driven town and home to many of Burgundy’s negociants. It is also the largest town in the Côte d’Or after Beaune and contributes "nuits" to the name of Côte de Nuits (i.e., the northern half of the Côte d’Or).
The appellation itself is divided into two parts, where in the north it directly borders Vosne-Romanée, the southerly end is the commune of Prémeaux. There are no Grands Crus in this village, though it does have a large number of Premiers Crus.
The best Nuits-St-Georges Pinot Noir are layered with cherry, plum, underbrush and sandalwood. The fruit is sweet, the wine energetic, and the finish long and lush.