Winemaker Notes
This is the domaine's most complete and complex red wine, offering stunning concentration for a Saint-Romain. An enchanting nose of sous bois, red and black fruits, and subtle menthol gives way to a palate of youthfully inward fruit and impressive structure, and a sense of energy underlines the elegance and poise
lurking inside the wine’s broad-shouldered carriage. One really senses the Buissons’ skill with extraction as well as the vigor and health of their fruit. A bit of patience may be needed, but it will undoubtedly provide huge rewards down the road.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Perfumed with notes of raspberries and cherry blossoms, this is a spry, lifted expression of Pinot Noir. Pure fruited and mouthwatering yet penetrating and racy, it is made from biodynamically grown grapes sourced from 60-year-old vines and fermented predominantly in whole clusters. Edged by a lingering edge of fine, taut tannins,
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Jasper Morris
Fine mid purple, pure clean nose, really beautiful expression of fruit on the cusp of red and black, absolutely seamless, long smooth fine classy aftertaste.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
More reserved than the younger-vine Combe Bazin bottling, the Buisson brothers' 2019 Saint-Romain Sous Roches is superb, unwinding in the glass with notes of plums, red berries, rose petals and sweet soil tones. It's medium-bodied, deep and mineral, with fine depth at the core, powdery tannins and lively acids. It will merit at least a year or two of patience.
Rating: 90+
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.