Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru Les Cailles wafts from the glass with a lovely bouquet of cassis, plums, dark chocolate, grilled squab and smoked meats. Medium to full-bodied, elegantly layered and complete, it's muscular but refined, with a rich chassis of ripe tannin and an ample core of fruit, concluding with a long, perfumed finish.
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Jasper Morris
A dense dark purple. The bouquet shows very heady fruit, one of the later picked wines I suspect. It still works but you need to like the riper profile. Again, there is much more acidity than expected leading to a fresher feel. However, the finish is heavier and drier. Drink from 2028.
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.”
Inhabiting the bottom end of the northern half of the Côte d’Or, Nuits-St-Georges is a busy, market-driven town and home to many of Burgundy’s negociants. It is also the largest town in the Côte d’Or after Beaune and contributes "nuits" to the name of Côte de Nuits (i.e., the northern half of the Côte d’Or).
The appellation itself is divided into two parts, where in the north it directly borders Vosne-Romanée, the southerly end is the commune of Prémeaux. There are no Grands Crus in this village, though it does have a large number of Premiers Crus.
The best Nuits-St-Georges Pinot Noir are layered with cherry, plum, underbrush and sandalwood. The fruit is sweet, the wine energetic, and the finish long and lush.