Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Hugely dense, packed with ripe and generous black fruits, this is already showing its serious side with complex tannins and a dark, brooding texture that also brings out the wood aging. The fruit, a gorgeous array of perfumed black plums and damsons, is developing well, just hinting at future greatness. Drink from 2022.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Echezeaux Grand Cru has a sensual, expressive, kaleidoscopic bouquet with wonderful vibrant blackberry, cassis and blueberry scents infused with minerals. The palate is beautifully balanced with fine, sappy red berry fruit, a citric thread of racy acidity that neatly offsets the extravagant finish. There is plenty to savour on the vibrant, vivacious Echezeaux
Range:92-94 -
Wine Spectator
Broad and muscular, this red features pure violet, cherry and black currant flavors on a bed of dense, firm tannins. Balanced in an outsized way, with a kaleidoscopic finish that picks up mineral and spice elements. Best from 2019 through 2035.
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.