Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Marsannay Clos du Roy (Domaine Gagey) is a strong effort, offering up notes of plums, cherries, petals and licorice, followed by a medium to full-bodied, suave and enveloping palate that's bright and lively.
Barrel Sample: 89-91 -
Vinous
The 2023 Marsannay Clos du Roy clearly has more amplitude on the nose than the le Chapitre, with suave red fruit, briar and hints of brown spice. The palate is medium-bodied and fleshy with quite succulent tannins and countervailing acidity. I appreciate the cohesion and length on the finish. Recommended.
Barrel Sample: 89-91
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.”
Perched up in the northernmost position in the Côte de Nuits, Marsannay is the only appellation village of Burgundy to produce classified wines of all three colors: red, white— and rosé. The official Rosé de Marsannay earned its high reputation in the early 1900s.
Its reds, made of Pinot Noir, burst with red and black fruit and are consistently long on the palate. Chardonnays from Marsannay are charming, floral and full of citrus fruit and mineral. Top Marsannay vineyards include Clos du Roy and Les Longeroies.