Winemaker Notes
Serve with game, meats, mushroom dishes and strong cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Jasper Morris
A glowing crimson colour. There is an impressive volume of fruit on the nose. Medium weight, lively raspberry and strawberry with a certain sweetness of fruit indicating a decent ripeness level. This does fill the mouth very juicily, the vintage enlivening the finish. Drink from 2027-2035.
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Wine Spectator
Offers ripe cherry, blueberry and spice flavors, with an underlying mineral vein, plus toasty oak for support. Though submerged for the time being, the fruit lingers on the long aftertaste. This just needs time to reconcile with the oak.
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Vinous
The 2021 Gevrey-Chambertin Clos Saint-Jacques 1er Cru offers more red fruit compared to Sylvie Esmonin: raspberry and wild strawberry with a light menthol note loitering in the background. Fine delineation. The palate is medium-bodied with sweet ripe tannins and bright red fruit laced with orange pith and mandarin. Playful, perhaps not the most "serious" Clos Saint-Jacques, quite linear on the finish that decides not to furnish you with the frills of a truly great wine from this hallowed 1er Cru.
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.”
This small village is home to the Grands Crus in the farthest northerly stretches of Côte de Nuits and is famous for some of the deepest and firmest Burgundian Pinot Noir.
Gevrey boasts nine Grands Crus, the best of which are arguably Le Chambertin and Chambertin-Clos de Bèze. As with all of the fragmented vineyards of Burgundy, it isn’t easy to differentiate between the two, which are situated adjacent with Clos de Bèze slightly further up the hill than Le Chambertin. Clos de Bèze has a shallower soil and if you’re really counting, may produce wines less intense but more likely to charm. Some compare Le Chambertin in both power and plentitude only to the prized Romanée-Conti Grand Cru farther south in Vosne-Romanée.
Two other Grands Crus vineyards, Mazis-Chambertin (also written Mazy-) and Latricières-Chambertin command almost as much regard as Le Chambertin and Chambertin-Clos de Bèze. The upper part of Mazy, called Les Mazis Haut is the best and Latricières-Chambertin offers an abundance of juicy fruit and a silky texture in the warmer vintages.
Other Grands Crus are Ruchottes-Chambertin, Charmes-Chambertin, Mazoyères-Chambertin, Griotte-Chambertin and Chapelle-Chambertin.
The most respected Pinot Noir wines from Gevrey-Chambertin are robust and powerful but at the same time, velvety and expressive: black fruit, black liquorice and chocolate come into play. After some time in the bottle, the wines are harmonious with bright and sometimes candied fruit, and aromas of musk, truffle and forest floor. These have staying power.