Winemaker Notes
Round with a pungent bouquet of grilled almonds and vanilla. Nice fullness in the mouth with integrated oak and a long, mineral finish. Even if it is a flattering wine quite young, it deserves a few years of cellaring to reach its peak.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Such a classic Corton Charlemagne! Stunningly concentrated and powerful, but also so graceful. Very racy at the long finish, which has so much mineral freshness. Takes your breath away! Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
Concentrated but polished, deep but silky, this quietly powerful wine integrates velvety tannins and gorgeous black-fruit flavors. Made from old vines on a three-acre plot, the wine offers an inviting blend of black cherries and black currant, spearmint, cedar and dark chocolate that are delicious now, but will gain complexity and expand with time.
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Wine Spectator
A broad and lush white, with flavors of peach, lemon oil, sweet corn and spiced apple married to a texture verging on oily. Lively, with acidity keeping this well-defined and long on the finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru is also quite promising, exhibiting aromas of pear, buttered citrus fruit, honeycomb, toasted almonds and white flowers. Full-bodied, satiny and rich, with a fleshy core of fruit and good underlying freshness, I hope it can repeat this fine performance from bottle.
Barrel Sample: 91-93
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.
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.