Gevrey-Chambertin “La Justice” Reviews

A more elegant and airier nose reflects aromas of various red berries, spice and a floral top note. The much more refined if not especially dense flavors also possess good energy as well as very good detail on the dusty, youthfully austere and harmonious finale. Lovely and a wine that could be enjoyed young if desired.

The 2020 Gevrey-Chambertin La Justice was completely-destemmed this year. It offers brambly red berry fruit laced with rose petals and peony on the nose. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannins, lithe in the mouth, no hard edges here with a lightly peppered, quite finessed finish. Worth seeking out.

Catch this as a young wine, while the tension in its structure elevates the delicate dried herb notes, and Brett adds detail to the tannins, a little dry, but spicy and delicious. Packed with a sweet cherry fruit, this is solidly built Gevrey, ready to drink with a steak. 

Well-marked by new oak, this leads off with vanilla and toast aromas, followed by cherry and black currant flavors lurking under-neath, marshaled by vivid acidity and embedded, chalky tannins. Hangs together through the lingering aftertaste of fruit and spice.  – B.S.

This flirts with reduction though if you let it sit for 15 minutes or so, aromas of dried flowers, red currant, underbrush and discreet earth nuances eventually appear. There is an elegant and refined mouth feel to the middle weight flavors that possess good verve, detail and minerality on the saline-inflected, clean and appealingly dry finish that displays just a hint of warmth. What this hasn’t done since I first reviewed it from barrel is to have developed much in the way of additional complexity and while it is still of course possible that it will in time, it’s typical to see at least some by this point. To be sure this is still an entirely lovely Gevrey villages but it’s not quite at the level that I originally foresaw. 

Here too there is enough wood to notice on the more elegant and slightly higher-toned aromas of assorted red berries that
evidence background nuances of earth, game and spice. There is plenty of verve to the delicious and appealingly detailed middle
weight flavors that possess a linear and tightly coiled finale. This will need a few years to unwind but this too has the potential
to be a lovely Gevrey villages.

Good full red. Aromas of redcurrant, raspberry, red licorice and coffee are complicated by a whiff of animal fur. Suave red fruit and spice flavors show a lovely balance of sweet and salty elements. With ripe balancing acidity, this sappy wine spreads out to saturate the palate and leaves the mouth refreshed on the saline finish.

The 2012 Gevrey-Chambertin La Justice is a little more textured and savory than the straight villages, with firmer tannins and a greater sense of structure. Dark red and black cherries, rosemary, sage and dried flowers linger on the finish. Veins of under

A beautifully perfumed nose of very pretty red currant, pinot, spice and subtle floral scents serve as an elegant intro to the mouth coating middle weight flavors that display a hint of minerality on the delicious and lingering finish where a trace of wood is in evidence. This is nicely balanced if only moderately complex though there is enough underlying material that it may very well succeed in adding depth with time in bottle.

The 2010 Gevrey-Chambertin La Justice comes across as delicate and fleeting in this vintage. Dried red cherries, crushed flowers and spices are some of the notes that waft from the glass. Overall, this comes across as a bit fragile and most likely best suited for drinking over the next few years. Anticipated maturity: 2015-2030. 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.

Here the nose is a bit more elegant and high-toned than the straight villages cuvée with a very pinot nose that also evidences hints of wet stone and Gevrey style earth. The cool, detailed and racy middle weight flavors culminate in a linear and mildly austere finish that displays excellent precision.

The 2009 Gevrey-Chambertin La Justice is quite a bit fleshier than the villages. This is a decidedly powerful, dense wine with tons of mid-palate energy and depth. The fruit is round, inviting and vibrant. This bottling is a selection of the estate’s best parcels planted on the limestone-rich part of the vineyard. Anticipated maturity: 2015-2019. 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.

(50% new wood and only the grapes from vines planted on high gravel content soil are kept as this helps to avoid rusticity and heaviness) A more deeply pitched nose offers aromas of dark berry fruit, hummus and a sauvage note that can also be found on the richer and fuller if less elegant flavors that retain a lovely sense of detail on the lingering firmer finish that is underpinned by dusty and serious tannins and the same length finale. A choice. 2016+