Winemaker Notes
Serve with roasts or highly seasoned meats, game and most cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2022 Corton-Pougets Grand Cru has a tightly wound bouquet with dark plum, raspberry coulis, incense and light sous-bois scents. It takes quite a few swirls of the glass to get the aromas going. The palate is medium-bodied with a structured, assertive opening. The tannins are slightly chalky, lending this Corton-Pougets edginess/nerve. Fine mineralité towards the finish yet tightly wound and almost curmudgeonly in its nascent state, this Grand Cru will demand long-term aging.
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Wine Spectator
A racy style, displaying pure cherry, blackberry, rose, stone and spice aromas and flavors. Its piercing acidity is the defining factor, keeping this energetic and tense and driving the prolonged aftertaste. Shows brilliant harmony and finesse.
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Jasper Morris
Not too deep in colour but with an appealing, almost savoury nose. Plenty of body here, with some dark cherry. The savoury aspect continues on the palate, some tannins, not the fullest bodied but with pedigree. I have such fond memories of this vineyard across the decades. Barrel Sample: 91-94
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.