Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Notes of sweet red cherries, herbs and dried flowers introduce the 2017 Blagny 1er Cru La Pièce Sous Le Bois, a medium-bodied, succulent wine with a tangy core of fruit, light but chalky tannins and a mouthwatering finish. From a high altitude, stony site, this is a singular Côte de Beaune bottling that will appeal to purists who love tensile, precise reds.
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Wine & Spirits
Catch this wine young, while its high-toned raspberry flavors are fresh and beautifully perfumed with scents of spring flowers. It’s simple, but it has a long and airy view through the finish, like a deep breath of fresh air at the edge of the Grand Canyon.
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.”
A classic source of exceptional Chardonnay as well as Pinot Noir, the Côte de Beaune makes up the southern half of the Côte d’Or. Its principal wine-producing villages are Pernand-Vergelesses, Aloxe-Corton, Beaune, Pommard, Volnay, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet.
The area is named for its own important town of Beaune, which is essentially the center of the Burgundy wine business and where many negociants center their work. Hospices de Beaune, the annual wine auction, is based here as well.