Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
More purple than black in colour and with a more joyous fruit, less rugged. A favourite of Pierre-Jean’s who finds a link with Charmes-Chambertin, the same phenolic maturity and underlying rock. This is really lovely, still with the amazingly firm structure, but here the ripe raspberry fruit floods all over it. Magnificent and for the long term.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Aromas of cherries, plums and loamy soil, framed by a touch of toasty new oak, introduce Roty's 2018 Marsannay Clos de Jeu, a medium to full-bodied, layered and envelopingly fleshy wine with lively acids and supple structuring tannins. Out of the gates, this would appear to be Roty's finest Marsannay this year, though the Ouzeloy will be nipping at its heels with a bit of bottle age.
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Vinous
The 2018 Marsannay Clos de Jeu is savory on the nose, touches of dried blood and meat juice filtering through the black fruit. The palate is medium-bodied with grippy tannins, black fruit struck through with blood orange and a crunchy-textured, tarry/tobacco finish. Long in the mouth.
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.”
Perched up in the northernmost position in the Côte de Nuits, Marsannay is the only appellation village of Burgundy to produce classified wines of all three colors: red, white— and rosé. The official Rosé de Marsannay earned its high reputation in the early 1900s.
Its reds, made of Pinot Noir, burst with red and black fruit and are consistently long on the palate. Chardonnays from Marsannay are charming, floral and full of citrus fruit and mineral. Top Marsannay vineyards include Clos du Roy and Les Longeroies.