Winemaker Notes
Dark and intense fruits dominate the spicy notes that follow on the nose. It is full-bodied with rich tannins and surprises the palate with its minerality and energy.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
This is the kind of pure Burgundy pleasure that may drive you crazy for more. A riper, equally honest sibling to the old-fashioned, rose-scented 2018, this grows high up the hill in Meursault, at the border with Puligny, where the thin soils leave the vines in close contact with limestone, providing a wine with buzzing energy and a delicate frame. For a 2019, the color is markedly transparent, as is the sour-cherry fruit, providing just enough of a scrim to cover the mineral and woodsy animal depths that layer the finish. The fruit lingers, quietly unfolding, with an understated beauty that completely wins my heart.
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Jasper Morris
Mid purple, a little touch of oak accompanying the fruit on the nose, much more detail of fruit on the palate, very lively and nuanced. Nothing too rich nor ripe. There is plenty of volume here, if anything superior to the Volnay Santenots. Brilliant balance and very persistent. Understated, but just my type of wine.
Barrel Sample: 92-94
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.