Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
OMG. This is so layered and dense with dried pineapple and apple. The concentration and depth is amazing. Full-bodied and dense plus super fruit. This is less than one fourth of the production. A crazy white. Drink, if you can find it.
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Wine Enthusiast
There was less than half the normal production of this flagship white in 2013. However, the wine conveys the rich character that is associated with this powerful cuvée. It has density, ripe structure and a background of toast and honey. The wine needs to age for several years, drink from 2020.
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Decanter
The richness that comes with maturity is starting to emerge and is nicely balanced by freshness and spice. Long and graceful, this still youthful wine is lovely to drink now. Even the next day, it showed elegance and freshness.
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Wine Spectator
Apple, pear and spice aromas and flavors are the hallmarks of this rich, expressive white. Creamy in texture, this displays intensity and a long, spice-filled aftertaste. Best from 2017 through 2022
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru, picked on October 8 has a lifted citrus lemon and orange-sorbet bouquet with fine delineation. The palate is fresh on the entry with decent weight, cohesive in the mouth, with light bitter lemon and granitic finish. I actually find more complexity here than in the Montrachet.
Maison Louis Latour is one of the most highly-respected négociant-éléveurs in Burgundy. Maison Louis Latour is the producer of some of the finest Burgundian wines but has also pioneered the production of fine wines from outside Burgundy's confines. These wines from the Ardèche and the Côteaux de Verdon are slowly gaining esteem for their unmatchable quality outside Burgundy.
All the grapes from the vineyards owned by the Latour family are vinified and aged in the attractive cuverie of Chateau Corton Grancey in Aloxe-Corton. The winery was the first purpose-built cuverie in France and remains the oldest still functioning. A unique railway system with elevators allows the entire wine-making process to be achieved by the use of gravity. This eliminates the threat of oxidation from unnecessary pumping of the must. Since 1985, Louis Latour has been selling the wines of its own vineyards under the name Domaine Louis Latour.
Louis Latour has been a leader in environmentally responsible winemaking for over 15 years. Louis Latour has had ISO 14001 accreditation for Environmental Management Systems since 2003 and has been part of the European association FARRE since 1998- a group of like-minded companies who seek to develop and promote sustainable methods of agriculture.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
The origin of perhaps the world’s very finest Pinot Noir, Côte de Nuits is the northern half of the Côte d'Or and includes the famous wine villages of Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-St-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée, Flagey-Echezeaux and Nuits-St-Georges.
Fine whites from Chardonnay are certainly found in the Côte de Nuits, but with much less frequency than top-performing reds made of Pinot noir. The little village of Nuits-St-Georges in its southern end gave the region its name: Côte de Nuits. The city of Dijon marks its northern border.