Winemaker Notes
The Grand Cru is a powerful wine with a structure similar to Côte de Nuits wines. The vineyard orientation allows to elaborate a wine with silky tannins and harmonious acidity. Les Grèves is a Southeast exposure vineyard based on a siliceous soil. This gives power and delicacy to the wine.
This exceptional site yields a powerful and delicate wine, with a deep color and powerful aromas of little red fruits and spicy notes. Its silky tannins and perfect structure will allow a good aging.
The red wines will complement fine dishes like meat in a highly-seasoned sauce, game, and most cheeses. This wine should not be drunk before 5 years and will certainly improve until 15 to 20 years.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Very Corton on the nose with notes of crushed black and white pepper and blueberries. Full-bodied, very structured and powerful with dense tannins and a chewy and juicy finish. This needs at least four or five years of bottle age to soften.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Corton Grèves Grand Cru was showing quite a bit of oak on the nose but there was more than enough fruit packed behind it. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannin, a fine bead of acidity with a subtle marine influence surfacing toward the finish that just tapers in when I want it to fan out. But this is a pretty Corton Grèves in the making.
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.”
Prevailing over the charming village of Aloxe, the hill of Corton actually commands the entire appellation. Corton is the only Grand Cru for Pinot Noir in the entire Côte de Beaune. Its Grand Crus red wines can be described simply as “Corton” or Corton hyphenated with other names. These vineyards cover the southeast face of the hill of Corton where soils are rich in red chalk, clay and marl.
Dense and austere when young, the best Corton Pinot Noir will peak in complexity and flavor after about a decade, offering some of the best rewards in cellaring among Côte de Beaune reds. Pommard and Volnay offer similar potential.
The great whites of the village are made within Corton-Charlemagne, a cooler, narrow band of vineyards at the top of the hill that descends west towards the village of Pernand-Vergelesses. Here the thin and white stony soils produce Chardonnay of exceptional character, power and finesse. A minimum of five years in bottle is suggested but some can be amazing long after. Fully half of Aloxe-Corton is considered Grand Cru.