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 30-60% new Burgundian piece 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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Wine Spectator
A lush, velvety red, this sports black cherry, blackberry, plum, earth and subtle dark chocolate flavors. Firm, yet harmonious and succulent, ending with a long, refined finish. Best from 2022 through 2040.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Nuits Saint-Georges 1er Cru Les Boudots is the last vintage that comprises all the vines since half the vineyard was pulled up, as the oldest vines—the most venerable older than Etienne Grivot's father—are no longer productive. It has a perfumed nose, rose petals and violet infusing the red and black fruit, understated at first but gradually unfolding in the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannin, very tensile, but I felt this was just missing some matière and depth toward the conservative finish. I wanted it to give me more. Maybe it will with time?
Barrel Sample: 89-91
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.