Domaine Tortochot
Amongst the big names of Gevrey Chambertin you can sometimes miss the gems that live in the shadows, Domaine Tortochot is one of those gems. They're not new, in fact they've been an important domaine locally for decades but perhaps it's the more recent developments here, under the stewardship of Chantal Tortochot, where they've started to assert their profile on the world stage.
There's no doubt that the move to convert all the vineyards to organic along with a quantum shift in winemaking have been instrumental. In the case of the latter, Chantal and her long time consultant, Sylvain Pataille, had been looking at the warming climate in Burgundy and decided to start using a percentage of whole bunch in the ferment, the feeling being that while this drops the overall acidity it also adds a freshness and mineral salinity to the wines, effectively taking the place of the acidity in the overall textural feel. At the same time the amount of new wood was drastically reduced and winemaking became less aggressive in extraction.
The end result are wines of lovely clarity and freshness that lack nothing in depth of fruit on the palate and are aromatically expressive - floral, herbal (not herbaceous)a and full of spice and red fruits. There's texture and chew on the backend. Excellent and thought-provoking wines that are well priced.
There's no doubt that the move to convert all the vineyards to organic along with a quantum shift in winemaking have been instrumental. In the case of the latter, Chantal and her long time consultant, Sylvain Pataille, had been looking at the warming climate in Burgundy and decided to start using a percentage of whole bunch in the ferment, the feeling being that while this drops the overall acidity it also adds a freshness and mineral salinity to the wines, effectively taking the place of the acidity in the overall textural feel. At the same time the amount of new wood was drastically reduced and winemaking became less aggressive in extraction.
The end result are wines of lovely clarity and freshness that lack nothing in depth of fruit on the palate and are aromatically expressive - floral, herbal (not herbaceous)a and full of spice and red fruits. There's texture and chew on the backend. Excellent and thought-provoking wines that are well priced.