Winemaker Notes
The 2020 Aloxe-Corton Les Chaillots Premier Cru has a deep ruby color and offers aromas of cherry, licorice and walnuts. The mouthfeel is very delicate and fresh. The finish is rather long and well balanced.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A smoky and earthy wine with an extremely firm structure. Wonderful forest-berry fruit. Very crunchy palate with a lot of energy and crisp acidity, the finish radically mineral. Needs some time, but this is a very impressive wine for the appellation and it has decades of aging potential.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2020 Domaine Louis Latour Aloxe-Corton Les Chaillots 1er Cru is an enticing and charming wine. TASTING NOTES: This wine excels with aromas and flavors of bright red fruits, alluring perfume, and wild strawberries. Pair it with grilled lamb chops. (Tasted: May 10, 2023, San Rafael, CA)
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine immediately reveals tension and verve, with aromas of wild thyme, ripe blackberry, and concentrated morello cherry—aromatic and inviting. On the palate, silky tannins seamlessly integrate with vibrant acidity, elevating the ripe black fruit. Perfectly ripe plums persist through the midpalate, where cardamom, saffron spice, and whole black peppercorn emerge.
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Wine Spectator
Shy and tannic at the moment, with earthy black cherry and plum flavors buried in a dense structure. This isn't overly astringent and ends with persistence, echoing the fruit and earth notes.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Aromas of cherries, raspberries, petals and spices preface the 2020 Aloxe-Corton 1er Cru Les Chaillots, a medium to full-bodied, ample and fleshy wine that's powerful and broad shouldered, with rich, powdery tannins and an expansive finish.
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.