Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru Reviews

Fragrant and supple, exuding strawberry, cherry, rose, sandalwood and cardamom flavors. Elegant in feel, harmonious and charming. - Bruce Sanderson

Moderate reduction again holds sway over the fruit at present. By contrast, there is excellent verve, volume and concentration to the large-scaled flavors that also flash evident power on the compact, serious and youthfully austere finish that is also a bit Cistercian.

Fragrant and supple in texture, exuding wild strawberry, cherry, rose, sandalwood and cardamom aromas and flavors. Elegant in feel, with ample tannins for support and a vibrant, extensive aftertaste. Harmonious and charming, yet the length of the finish is what defines its pedigree. Best from 2027 through 2045.

Toasty and leesy, with generous minerality underlying apple, lime and citronella aromas and flavors. Sleek and well-defined, with a virbrant aftertaste of citrus, orchard fruit, stone and spices. - Bruce Sanderson

Though this red is oaky, there's also a whole-cluster feel to it, with sandalwood and vegetal aromas synching with flavors of black currant and blackberry. Iron and sweet baking spices chime in as this plays out on the lingering aftertaste, showing fine balance. Best from 2026 through 2045. - Bruce Sanderson

The Boisset family domaine, based in Vougeot, included some white parcels with long histories tied to the Abbaye de Cîteaux, as well as some prime plots of pinot noir. Their main parcel, 2.59 acres, is close to the top of the vineyard, with vines dating from the 1940s and ’50s to the early ’90s. A second parcel, at the bottom of the Clos, is just under an acre of vines planted in the mid-’80s. Their biodynamically farmed fruit comes together in a fragrant 2019, subtle rather than super-concentrated, bright, and rose-scented. Instead of weight, it offers length, continuing for minutes as it will continue for years in the cellar.

Expressive, spicy and silky, with berry and cherry fruit wrapped in toasty, vanilla-tinged oak. Firm yet elegant, with a layer of dusty tannins; however, the lasting impression is ripe fruit and an underlying mineral element. Just needs tiem. Best from 2026 through 2045. 

Expressive, spicy and silky, with berry and cherry fruit wrapped in toasty, vanilla-tinged oak. Firm yet elegant, with a layer of dusty tannins; however, the lasting impression is ripe fruit and an underlying mineral element. Just needs time. Best from 2026 through 2045. —B.S.

The 2015 Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru offers up a sapid bouquet of grilled game bird, espresso roast, wild plums and dark berries. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, ample and velvety, with real mid-palate substance, supple, melting tannins and impressive reserves of concentration and depth despite its elegant, understated profile. The finish is long, precise and succulent. From bottle, the Clos de Vougeot is one of the most promising wines from Domaine de la Vougeraie.

Complex aromas and flavors of red berry, sandalwood, vanilla, floral and mineral are alluring, made all the more appealing by the elegant frame and vivid structure. Silky and harmonious enough to drink now, but this should really sing in five to seven years. Offers a fine, smoky finish.

Most of this wine comes from a parcel near the top of the vineyard, at the corner just below the alley that leads to the entrance of the Château du Clos de Vougeot; a smaller portion comes from the base of the vineyard, both parcels farmed under biodynamics since 2001. This is more powerful than many wines from this large grand cru, potently reduced so that it’s more feral animal and tar than fruit for now. Underneath that dark funk there’s a youthful floral note that lasts, waiting to emerge more fully as the wine resolves with age.

Complex aromas and flavors of red berry, sandalwood, vanilla, floral and mineral are alluring, made all the more appealing by the elegant frame and vivid structure. Silky and harmonious enough to drink now, but this should really sing in five to seven years. Offers a fine, smoky finish. Best from 2023 through 2040. 

The 2016 Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru has a very elegant and poised bouquet, fine transparency here with superb delineation, not powerful but very precise and almost understated in style. The palate is medium-bodied with a pleasant chewiness to the tannin, good body, more assertive in the mouth than on the nose with a chalky texture toward the finish. Good length, lean and poised but fanning out with confidence—what a sublime expression of this famous vineyard.

Red Sweet vanilla, butterscotch and milk chocolate notes give way to cherry and spice flavors in this tightly wound red. The oak is dominant now, but there is a lot going on. The finish is long, ending with ripe fruit. 

Deep medium red. Subdued but pretty aromas of dark cherry, wild herbs and licorice. Broad and silky on entry, then much more dense and backward in the middle palate; the largest-scaled of the Domaine de la Vougeraie 2015s to this point but very slow to evolve. The slightly medicinal finish displays substantial dusty tannins and a strong licorice quality. Still quite reserved but very pure, spicy and long. In fact, this wine seemed to gain in power after I spit it. Vincent ranks this wine with 2014 and 2010 as his favorite vintages here for Clos Vougeot, but it will require considerable patience. -- Stephen Tanzer

A restrained and discreetly floral-inflected nose features ripe plum and black berry liqueur aromas along with plenty of earth character. The broad-scaled, rich and intense broad-shouldered flavors evidence a sleek muscularity on the long, punchy and moderately austere finish. This is relatively fine for a youth Clos de Vougeot and that should enable it to be approachable young even though it should easily improve for 15 to 20 years.
 

Good medium red. Musky, slightly rustic nose shows more red than black fruits, with complicating notes of underbrush, herbs and pepper. Very rich, tactile, dry and backward, showing more minerality and medicinal reserve than primary berry or cherry fruit in the early going. Tough going today in spite of its depth of texture and richness. Not at all a sweet style. Vincent told me he prefers the easier sweetness of the 2014, noting that, in general, he regards the 2010 vintage as the best compromise between sweetness and energy since he took over winemaking here in 2006. — Stephen Tanzer

The 2014 Clos Vougeot Grand Cru includes 70% whole cluster fruit this year. It has a well defined nose that perhaps does not quite deliver the complexity that I was expecting. It needs a little more precision and mineralité. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannin, here, showing the detail and the class that I would like to see expressed aromatically. Nicely weighted on the finish with a hint of orange zest, this will hopefully turn out to be a fine Clos Vougeot...just so long as the nose puts its house in order.

GOLD

A highly floral nose combines notes of red berries and discreet spice elements with soil, game and humus undertones.
The broad-shouldered flavors possess an unusually supple mid-palate that possesses fine concentration before culminating
in a vibrant and intense finish that delivers fine length. Despite being approachable there is a firm core of supporting tannins
and this will need all of 12 years or so to fully resolve them.

Healthy bright red. Musky aromas of dark cherry, wild herbs and smoky minerality. Concentrated and sweet, with pronounced soil tones to the strawberry and game flavors. Finishes juicy and very long, with building but fully ripe tannins. Since 2009 this cuvée has had a healthy level of acidity thanks to organic farming, noted Vincent. The estate's two parcels of Clos-Vougeot were blended just a week before my visit. Highly promising.

The 2012 Clos de Vougeot is deep, dense, powerful and earthy. Here, it is the wine's pure depth and resonance that stand out. I imagine the 2012 will start to drink beautifully in a handful of years, once the tannins start to soften a bit.

Black and sleek with the dark-roast coffee scent of expensive oak, this wine's graceful fruit and incipient complexity is overtaken up front by that smokiness. But it's the strawberry essence that lasts in the finish, warm and powerful, ready to go the distance in the cellar.

Features a roasted charry note to the black cherry and red berry flavors, with a beam of mineral and spice. Turns elegant on the finish, revealing a lingering aftertaste of underbrush, spice and mineral. Best from 2016 through 2035. 523 cases made. –BS

The black cherry core is framed by vanilla and smoky oak notes in this powerful, beefy red. The tannins dominate the ripe fruit at this stage, contributing to a raw finish. The elements are all there, but this needs time to come together in the cellar.

Year's Best Burgundy (Oct 2013). Vougeraie owns close to 2.5 acres of vines in Clos de Vougeot, in the northwest sector of the vineyard, including several blocks planted in the late 1940s and early '50s. Farmed under biodynamics since 2001, the vines produce a true grand cru wine, the 2010 seductive and monastically severe at once. Its scen is awsome: the perfume of the arth after a rain, the essence of cherries and pressed flowers. The flavor is dense, a youthfully blank slate that fills with the interplay of sun and earth as the complexity develops for minutes after each taste. Check on this with ten years of bottle age; it's destined for greatness.

Medium red. Expressive aromas of strawberry, earth and game, lifted by a subtle floral element. Broad and rich on the palate, but with good focus to the red fruit and smoky earth flavors. Finishes with substantial dusty but fine-grained tannins and excellent length. Boasts plenty of early sweetness but I'd lay it down for six or seven years.

The black cherry core is framed by vanilla and smoky oak notes in this powerful, beefy red. The tannins dominate the ripe fruit at this stage, contributing to a raw finish. The elements are all there, but this needs time to come together in the cellar. Best from 2017 through 2035.

Moderate wood influence frames the ripe and fresh nose that combines crushed red berries, earth, dried rose petal and subtle kirsch and spice hints. There is good power, size and weight to the medium weight plus flavors where once again the underlying tannins are relatively fine grained, all wrapped in a mouth coating, balanced and cool finish that delivers excellent persistence where the wood resurfaces. Note that this will also require 12 to 15 years of cellar time to arrive at its full potential.

A fine bouquet of perfectly ripe fruit with a red berry character extends to a complex and aromatic palate, with finesse and great length.

The 2010 Clos de Vougeot possesses stunning textural depth and richness. Layers of dark red fruit, smoke, licorice and sweet spices are woven together beautifully in the glass. The energy and wiriness of Vougeot is palpable, but there is more than enough fruit to fill out the wine’s broad shoulders. This is another fabulous effort. The domaine has two parcels in Clos Vougeot: a 1.2 hectare parcel next to the chateau and a second smaller parcel measuring 0.23 hectares on the bottom part of the vineyard by the main road. Anticipated maturity: 2025-2045. This is stunning set of wines from Pierre Vincent and Domaine de la Vougeraie. It is impossible to miss the attention to detail at this impeccably run domaine. No expense is spared. It takes 80 people to work the vineyards during harvest and another 20 in the cellar to take it from there. Production in 2010 was of course down significantly as it was everywhere else. Yields came in at 24 hectoliters per hectare for the Pinot and 29 for the Chardonnay. Vincent used between 30-80% whole bunches, depending on the wine. Readers who want to learn more might want to check out my video interview with Pierre Vincent on www.erobertparker.com. I will report on the domaine’s 2009s in the April issue. For now let me just say the 2009 Musigny is one of the wines of the vintage.

Moderate reduction renders the nose difficult to assess other than to observe a bit of wood spice and aromas that appear to be notably ripe. There is by contrast plenty of verve and power to the brooding, dense and well-muscled flavors that possess ripe and very firm supporting tannins and outstanding length. Vincent noted that he believes that this is the best Clos de Vougeot that he has ever made and I would have to agree that at this early juncture, it is the most promising example that I have tasted at this address.

The 2009 Clos de Vougeot is impeccable from start to finish. Layers of succulent red fruit emerge from this structured yet balanced, harmonious wine. A final burst of red fruit informs the energetic, polished finish. The Clos de Vougeot is made from two parcels, the first at the top of the hill measures 1.2 hectares, the second to the bottom 0.3 hectares, aged separately and blended one month prior to bottling. The wine was fermented with 30% whole clusters and aged in 70% new oak with no rackings during elevage. Anticipated maturity: 2019-2029. Biodynamic farming and non-interventionalist winemaking are at the heart of the approach at Domaine de la Vougeraie. The 2009s saw roughly a 25 days of maceration (including a week of cold soak) with one punch down a day. Once in barrel racking was kept to a bare minimum. A number of wines were bottled in late 2010 and early 2011. I tasted these wines with winemaker Pierre Vincent in March 2011.

Tasted out of the barrel at the Domaine. A blend from their two parcels at the bottom and top of the Grand Cru, this has a lifted bouquet of cassis, blueberry and dark cherries, prominent new oak but here in synch with the fruit and it should meld nicely over time. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins on the entry, a pleasing sense of symmetry here with fine definition and freshness on the crisp, redcurrant and Morello finish. This is a very fine Clos Vougeot. Tasted November 2010

(from an exceptionally well-positioned 1 ha parcel situated directly beneath Les Petits Musigny that is combined with another less well located .35 ha parcel close to the main road) 40% whole clusters. This is quite densely fruited with floral and freshly turned earth aromas adding interest to the wild and medium-toned red berry fruit. The delicious, intense and serious broad-shouldered flavors possess excellent mid-palate and concentration with ample amounts of dry extract that partially buffers the chewy and ripe tannins on the long and less austere than usual finish, 2023+

Drink 2017-2024 Very slightly cheesy on the nose. Then very sweet. Lots of fine tannin. Masses of fruit. Positively voluptuous.