Winemaker Notes
A true delight and a great harmony! A beautiful purple color. On the nose, delicate and fruity aromas such as strawberry and red currant. On the palate, the tannins are refined and lend a nice roundness to the body. Elegant aftertaste.
Professional Ratings
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 Joseph Drouhin Côte de Beaune delivers excellent richness and style. TASTING NOTES: This wine is tight-knit and beautifully-built. Pair its aromas and flavors of bright red fruit, and attractive dried leather with duck confit, lentils, and wild rice. (Tasted: April 25, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
-
Wine Enthusiast
At first, a whiff of reduction obscures the lovely raspberry note on the nose of this wine. The palate also presents that raspberry and adds tart cherry. The concentrated body is held in a web of tannins, approachable, balanced and juicy.
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.