Winemaker Notes
Vines in this parcel are pruned to Guyot simple. Harvest is entirely by hand with yields of approximately 34 hL per hectare.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
Medium purple, somewhat reductive. This may lack the charm of the best examples but there is no doubting the intensity of the fruit. Maybe a fractional lack of purity, though perhaps that is more just an adolescent stage. Very good persistence.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Among the richer, more dramatic wines in the range is the 2020 Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru Aux Argillats, a fleshy, velvety, medium to full-bodied wine that exhibits notes of cherries, ripe berries, licorice, spices and rose petals. There's more amplitude here, but its communal-level sibling may well surpass it with a decade in bottle.
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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.”
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.