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 30-35% new Burgundian pièce brings notes of vanilla, toast, and baking spices.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Back to a normal crop in 2017 after a 50% hit in 2016, this is made in a Vosne-like style by the Grivots, even though the grapes come from the southern side of Nuits-St-Georges. Poised, supple and almost good to drink from the barrel, it has juicy, lip-smacking fruit, stylish 30% new wood and balancing acidity.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Grivot's 2017 Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru Roncière is attractive, bursting with aromas of blackberries, wild berries and currant leaf that are delicately framed by a touch of spicy new oak. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, fleshy but mineral, with an ample core of juicy fruit, fine tannins and a saline finish. This might surpass the Pruliers this year.
Barrel Sample: 91-93 -
Jasper Morris
Slightly more evolved in colour, prettily stemmy on the nose, floral with crushed tinned strawberries, which become fresher with air. A certain succulence, certainly some white pepper, attractive in its style.
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.