Winemaker Notes
#90 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2023
This powerfully structured, rich-fruited wine offers deep, layered berry and oak aromas and flavors, and a persistent finish. It should be held for 5 years in bottle before being opened, and will develop for 15 to 20 years in the cellar.
Serve with roasts or highly seasoned meats, game and most cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Intense and tightly wound, this red is firmly structured and energetic, featuring cherry, strawberry, stone and spice flavors, with the acidity and tannins lending support for future evolution. All the components are there, this just needs a few years to knit together.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Corton-Pougets Grand Cru (Domaine des Héritiers Jadot) is excellent, mingling aromas of cherries and raspberries with notions of raw cocoa, orange rind, warm spices and smoke. Full-bodied, velvety and layered, it's deep and concentrated, with powdery tannins, bright acids and a long, resonant finish.
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Jasper Morris
A powerful fresh purple. Intense fresh dark red fruit on the nose. This too suggests it is going to be a massive mouthful, but not without elegance, and the fruit is more evenly spaced across the palate. A notably long finish. Not a massive, concentrated grand cru, but there is plenty to like.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2020 Domaine des Héritiers Louis Jadot Corton-Pougets is charming, active, and substantial. TASTING NOTES: This wine offers aromas and flavors of energetic red fruits and a hint of minerality. Pair it with an oven-baked, lightly-seasoned leg of lamb. (Tasted: February 2, 2022, San Francisco, CA)
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.