From: Burgundy, France
Varietal: Pinot Noir
Taste: Immediately upon opening, beautifully attractive, red-fruited aromas like perfectly ripened Bing cherry, strawberry, and raspberry meet rose petals, licorice, baking spice, and tilled earth, and keeps getting better in the glass. The first impression from aroma alone indicates that this wine punches far above its price, especially for this vintage: a short, hot growing season in Burgundy. These aromas translate wonderfully on the palate, the fruit, baking spice, and earth components melding seamlessly together, leading to a lengthy, driven finish. While this wine is excellent now, it’ll continue getting better for the next 5-10 years. Highly recommend.
Pairing: A crowd-pleasing Pinot Noir that’s neither too stiff with tannins nor
too fleshy means it goes well with such meats as rabbit, lamb, or duck. It can stand salted or mildly spiced dishes (duck à l’orange, tajines…). An adaptable wine that, thanks to its attractive balance, commends itself to a wide range of dishes. Other pairing options include roast/baked chicken or pork with morels, sausage, and polenta, pork chops (see the recipe below), risotto with morels, pan-roasted chicken in a cream sauce, and I swear by this: spam musubi and mochiko chicken.
Brined Pork Chops With Fennel
By David Tanis
About. Maxime Cheurlin was only 20 years old in 2010 when he took over this historic estate, located in the heart of Vosne-Romanée. The history of the domaine starts with Georges Noëllat, who was the nephew of Charles Noëllat, once the proprietor of one of Vosne’s greatest domaines, which eventually was split up into parts that eventually formed the vast majority of Domaine Leroy.
After George’s passing, his wife took over the management of the estate, eventually passing the domaine down to their daughter Maria Theresa Noellat and her husband Jacques Cheurlin (a Champagne grower) in 1991. Maria Theresa managed the estate until 2009, when she passed the domaine to her grandson Maxime Cheurlin, who runs the estate today.
Maxime grew up in Champagne, but took his winemaking studies at the Lycée du Viticole in Beaune with stages at Domaine Emmanuel Rouget (Maxime is cousins with the sons of Emmanuel Rouget) and Domaine Gros Frère et Soeur, before settling at his family domaine.
Small but mighty, the 5.5-hectare domaine includes some of the most profound terroirs of Vosne Romanée and northern Nuits St Georges, including a large proportion of incredibly old vines, planted before WWII. Maxime has earned a reputation for his elegant, lacy style of Pinot Noir that speak of their incredible terroir.
All the grapes are hand-harvested, and cool macerated for a few days before fermentation begins (indigenous yeast only). During vinification, Maxime prefers the term “infusion” to extraction, so punch downs are rare and gentle, and aging lasts 14 to 20 months, with the wines bottled unfined and unfiltered. Today, Maxime is a bonafide star in the Côte de Nuits, with a staggering array of some of the greatest terroirs in all of Burgundy, that are treated with the care and attention that allows them to deliciously express every bit of their enormous potential.
About Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits. The regional appellation of Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits produces red wines from higher slopes (as the name suggests) above the escarpment of the Côte de Nuits. Sometimes known as the Champs-Elysées of the Bourgogne, this narrow strip of Côte de Nuits hillside can be just 200 meters wide in some places, though it stretches for over 20 kilometers. The producers on this vein of rock are specialists in red wines. You can probably guess why—drainage, climate, soil and love, all married together in the bottle. The buzz phrase in Burgundy these days, especially after several recent years of drought, is the 'quality is moving up the hill'. In other words, the perfect Burgundian growing conditions are at a higher altitude these days than they were a decade ago. It really is all about the terroir. As you gain height on the hilltops of the Côte de Nuits, a mixture of scree and silt begin to enrich the marl—and as luck would have it, this happens to be in areas which have the perfect balance of sun and shelter. That’s why there are over twenty vineyards designated as Grand Cru here.
This is the most northerly region in Europe to make such high-quality red wines— often challenging, as rain and damaging hail can threaten the delicate crop. The fact that the quantities made are relatively small can also mean high prices—that is, unless you know where the great value and quality is to be found (hint: it’s often amongst the smaller producers).
More on the region. Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Nuits is the appellation for red, white and rosé wines produced from vineyards on the "hautes cotes" (high slopes) of the Côte de Nuits subregion of the northern Côte d'Or, Burgundy. Created in 1961, it is clearly distinguished from the more prestigious vineyards located on the mid-slopes below, which fall under the eight communal and 23 Grand Cru appellations of the Côte de Nuits.
The title is in fact a sub-appellation, or complementary geographic denomination, of the wider "Bourgogne" appellation (similar to the Hautes Côtes de Beaune or Coulanges-la-Vineuse). The Hautes Côtes de Nuits covers around 750 hectares (1,800 acres), spread across 20 communes in the southern portion of the Côtes de Nuits, starting on the slopes above and west of Chambolle-Musigny and running to the boundary with the northern Côte de Beaune.
Although, in practice, the area covers the vineyards to the west of the high-profile communes of Chambolle-Musigny, Flagey-Echezeaux, Vosne-Romanée, Nuits-Saint-Georges and Premeaux-Prissey, the vineyards in these villages are also covered by the Hautes Côtes de Nuits title.
While this does give the option of declassifying production in these communes, this is rare – especially given the price tag such names can command. Most production occurs in the 15 communes further west which, together, produce around 3.5 million bottles of Hautes Côtes de Nuits every vintage.
The terroir of the Hautes Cotes, particularly the climate, differs noticeably from that of the lower slopes to the east. The higher altitude of the vineyards (300–400m or 985–1310ft) means the grapes sometimes struggle to ripen fully, leading to less richly flavored, less-complex wines.
To minimize the impact of this cooler climate, the Hautes Côtes vineyards are most often planted on south- and west-facing slopes which benefit from maximum exposure to the sun's warmest rays.
In terms of soil make-up, Hautes Côtes vines are largely planted on sites with marlstone sub-strata, rather than the chalky soils which dominate the lower slopes. That said, there are clear outcrops of bright white limestone in various places, marked out by the quarries which dot the landscape.
The majority of Hautes Côtes wines are Pinot Noir, with Chardonnay commonly used grape for white wines (which account for about a quarter of production). Rosé (or clairet) wines are produced from Pinot Noir and constitute only a fraction of total production.
This wine:
100% Pinot Noir
1 ha parcel in the lieu dit: “Le Champ des Allouettes”
Located in the Leully area above Nuits St. Georges
South facing hillside
Limestone terroir
10% whole cluster
Indigenous yeast
Aged in barrel (33% new)