Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Richebourg Grand Cru has turned out brilliantly, offering up a complex bouquet of cherries, berries and plums mingled with oriental spices, rich soil tones, rose petals and blood orange. Full-bodied, velvety and layered, it's muscular and concentrated, with huge reserves of fruit that largely conceal its broad-shouldered chassis of ripe, velvety tannins. Long and penetrating, this is the high point of Vincent Mongeard's portfolio this year.
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.