Winemaker Notes
The wine shows aromas and flavors of red berries, herbs, and purple flowers. The palate is rich with ripe fruit and medium weight with bright acidity and fine tannins. Aging in 40-45% new Burgundian pièce brings notes of vanilla, toast, and baking spices.
Red Burgundy might be the world’s most flexible food wine. The wine’s high acidity, medium body, medium alcohol, and low tannins make it very food-friendly. Red Burgundy, with its earthy and sometimes gamey character, is a classic partner to roasted game birds, grilled duck breast, and dishes that feature mushrooms, black truffles, or are rich in umami.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Yields were back up to normal here in 2017 after the frost-ravaged 2016 crop. This impressive Échézeaux, sourced from old vines in Les Rouges du Bas, is floral and appealing, with alluring texture, aromas of peony and rose petal, velvety tannins and a refreshing, chalk-tinged acidity. The slight reduction will disappear after racking. Read more at http://www.decanter.com/wine-
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Wine Spectator
A rich, voluptuous red, boasting black cherry, plum, earth, spice and mineral flavors. Fluid, showing terrific structure and fine harmony. The finish lingers with fruit and oak spice notes. Decant now if you must, but better to cellar for a few years. Best from 2023 through 2042.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Aromas of warm spices, espresso roast, grilled game and dark chocolate complement notions of dark plum and berry fruit, introducing Grivot's 2017 Echézeaux Grand Cru, a full-bodied, ample and expansive wine with a generous core of fruit, fine tannins and a giving, open-knit profile. This will drink well in its youth.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Jasper Morris
Darkish colour, a little bit lactic with slightly smudged red fruit. This is going through an awkward phase at the moment, though it might also be that the fruit was picked a little late, as I would have liked a little more freshness to the predominantly strawberry fruit. No more than fair persistence.
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.