Winemaker Notes
Due to their situation, the red wines of the premiers crus of Pernand-Vergelesses are at the same time fine and elegant. They offer more fat and power than villages wines. Visually it is a wine with purple-blue tints and subtle nuances. Its expressive raspberry, violet, and black currant notes offer a fleshy and beautifully intense wine. In the mouth, its full and delicate texture will astonish you. Charmed and delighted with the harmony of this appellation, the consumer will succumb to the magic and the enchantment of the wines of Pernand.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Pernand-Vergelesses 1er Cru Les Vergelesses is another success, delivering aromas of cherries, blackberries, exotic spices, raw cocoa and peonies. Medium to full-bodied, fleshy and layered, with lively acids to underpin its gourmand core of fruit, it concludes with a nicely defined finish.
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Wine Spectator
Bright cherry, plum and pomegranate flavors are accented by oak spice in this plush red. It firms up nicely and stays vibrant, with a fresh, invigorating finish. Best from 2023 through 2035. 55 cases imported.
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.”
Occupying the most northerly combe (the French term for a valley that cuts through a hillside) of the Côte de Beaune, Pernand-Vergelles sits to the west of and behind the hill of Corton. The most sought after whites of the village come from the slope of Pernand on the side of Corton where Pernand-Vergelles shares the Grand Cru Corton-Charlemagne with Aloxe-Corton. The best red producing Cru is Les Vergelles, which overlaps into Savigny-les-Beaune. Reds here are fleshy, seductive and structured while whites are both lively and age worthy.