Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A classic-styled Echezeaux with smoke, dried strawberries and spices. Flowers, too. Full body, dusty tannins and firm, polished and textured finish. Needs four or five years to open but a beautiful wine to taste now.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Grands Echézeaux Grand Cru has a refined bouquet with blackberry, blueberry, woodland and spice box aromas—quite complex and very focused, growing in stature in the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannin. The oak comes through rather too strongly on the finish, and I hope this is assimilated by the time it is bottled. I did inquire and was told that it was matured in a single 350-liter barrel that was one year old, so maybe it was just one of those days?
Range: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.”
Claiming the two famous Grand Crus, Echezeaux and Grands Echezeaux, the identity of this village, Flagey-Echezeaux, rides predominantly on the glory of those two crus. All of the village or Premier Cru status vineyards in Flagey-Echezeaux market themselves under the name of their neighbor, Vosne-Romanée.
Echezeaux Pinot noir tends be light, bright and full of finesse, whereas those of Grands Echezeaux typically have more heft and complexity.