Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
This charming white Marsannay from Trapet is easy to love with its slightly exotic aromas of passionfruit, pomelo, and ripe apricots. The texture is waxy and dense, with a lovely chewy consistency and surprising length. The grapes come from the Grasses Têtes vineyard, where Trapet farms a parcel at the top of the slope planted with 10% Pinot Beurot mixed in with the Chardonnay. The grapes are crushed before pressing and fermented in large 25-hectolitre wooden vats. This wine will be drinkable immediately but will continue to improve with at least mid-term ageing.
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Jasper Morris
From Grasses Tetes and Grands Poiriers. 25% whole bunch vinification which does not show. A rich heady purple, with a flamboyant nose to match. Perfumed dark berry fruit, very exuberant without losing precision, a little coconut from the wood, then fresh acidity. Delicious long finish. Drink from 2026-2030.
Barrel Sample: 89-92
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.