Winemaker Notes
Pairs perfectly with delicate dishes that are not too spicy (red meat in sauce, cheeses).
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru has a very refined bouquet, the precocity of the vineyard harnessed and kept under control, very focused and delineated with intense black cherry and mulberry scents, crushed violet unfurling with time. I can see this blossoming down the line. The palate is very well balanced with crisp acidity, lively and tensile. There is not enormous weight and penetration towards the finish, preferring to remain quite linear and "well-behaved," yet it is certainly long and persistent, and it should bestow 20-30 years of drinking pleasure.
Range:94-96
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.”
The origin of perhaps the world’s very finest Pinot Noir, Côte de Nuits is the northern half of the Côte d'Or and includes the famous wine villages of Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-St-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée, Flagey-Echezeaux and Nuits-St-Georges.
Fine whites from Chardonnay are certainly found in the Côte de Nuits, but with much less frequency than top-performing reds made of Pinot noir. The little village of Nuits-St-Georges in its southern end gave the region its name: Côte de Nuits. The city of Dijon marks its northern border.