Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2008 Grands Echézeaux Grand Cru is beginning to drink beautifully, bursting from the glass with a perfumed bouquet of peonies, blood orange, wild berries, plums and smoked duck, framed by a nicely integrated touch of spicy new oak. Medium to full-bodied, supple and satiny, with melting tannins and a bright spine of acidity, it concludes with a long, sapid finish.
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Wine Spectator
A minty accent graces black cherry and earth flavors in this slightly chunky red, which is a bit rigid now, but starts out silky, so let it settle down and absorb the tannins. Fine length.
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.