Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine & Spirits
There are Echezeaux wines that are light and ethereal. This is not one of them. Mounir and Rotem Saouma offer a deep, dark, mysterious grand cru. What complications of gaminess and smoke the wine presents at first resolve to complexities by the second day the bottle is open, its detail just beginning to unfold. The wine’s depth of fruit expands on its satin texture, still lovely, rich and intoxicating five days out. If Lucien Le Moine’s premier cru wines often rise to grand-cru stature, what is left to say about the stature of this grand 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.”
Claiming the two famous Grand Crus, Echezeaux and Grands Echezeaux, the identity of this village, Flagey-Echezeaux, rides predominantly on the glory of those two crus. All of the village or Premier Cru status vineyards in Flagey-Echezeaux market themselves under the name of their neighbor, Vosne-Romanée.
Echezeaux Pinot noir tends be light, bright and full of finesse, whereas those of Grands Echezeaux typically have more heft and complexity.