Winemaker Notes
The wines of Clos de la Roches are always very virile and elegant with a very long guard.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Sweetly ripe black fruits in the nose of the Ponsot 2006 Clos de La Roche Cuvee Vieilles Vignes prepare the way for a more succulently, generously sweet fruit, plush texture, and generally sunny disposition than that presented by the corresponding Clos St.-Denis. Ripe cherry and red currant flood the creamy, silken palate with sweetness, while some of the same notes of citrus oil, floral perfume (here iris), and peat as exhibited in the Clos St.-Denis swirl about, too. Saline, chalky suggestions help offer contrast and a sounding board to the fruit, and this finishes with exhilarating lift, riveting interplay, and phenomenal length. Here is a combination of textural allure and backbone for which velvet gloves and iron fists seem inappropriately mundane – not merely archaic – metaphors. Blind – I must confess (and did, to Ponsot) – that I would more likely have guessed this to be Musigny than Clos de la Roche. In an extreme instance of a phenomenon shared by many of the best 2006s, I find this irresistible now; find it hard to imagine its having ornery or sulking phases; yet expect it will be worth following for 20 years.
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.”
The origin of perhaps the world’s very finest Pinot Noir, Côte de Nuits is the northern half of the Côte d'Or and includes the famous wine villages of Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-St-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée, Flagey-Echezeaux and Nuits-St-Georges.
Fine whites from Chardonnay are certainly found in the Côte de Nuits, but with much less frequency than top-performing reds made of Pinot noir. The little village of Nuits-St-Georges in its southern end gave the region its name: Côte de Nuits. The city of Dijon marks its northern border.