Winemaker Notes
The Marsannay Rouge "Les Ouzeloy" comes multiple plots in Marsannay-la-Cote, Couchey and Chenove communes of Cote de Nuits. The wine opens to mild torrefaction aromas accompanied by dark fruits and floral notes. Young fruit and spice sensations with great structure and balance.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Marsannay Les Ouzeloy is showing beautifully from bottle, unwinding to reveal aromas of cassis, licorice, dark chocolate and loamy soil, framed by a deft application of toasty oak. Medium to full-bodied, supple and enveloping, this is broad-shouldered, concentrated and powerful wine, with fine depth and chalky structure, and it will merit and reward some bottle age.
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.