Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru “Les Corvées Pagets” Reviews

The 2010 Nuits St. Georges Les Corvees Paget is a powerful, super-ripe wine that shows quite a bit of exuberance. This was one of the last parcels to be harvested. The level of ripeness and concentration are a little unusual for the year. Once the juiciness fades off a bit, there isn’t as much complexity as is found in the best 2010s here. Anticipated maturity: 2015-2025. 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.

This is also aromatically dominated by reductive notes but it seems reasonably clear that the underlying fruit is ripe. The textured and well-concentrated flavors possess ripe structuring tannins and fine length. There is good balance and while this is still quite tightly wound there is excellent underlying depth of material that should augur well for up to a decade of improvement.

The 2009 Nuits St. Georges Les Corvees Pagets shows the more delicate side of Nuits in its perfumed, silky fruit. Crushed flowers, sweet herbs and mint add layers of nuance while the silky tannins caress the palate on the finish. The Corvees Paget was made with 40% whole bunches. Tasted from tank. 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.

An agreeably fresh nose offers up notes of wild red berries with ample soil influence and a hint of the sauvage that carries over to the round and attractively textured middle weight flavors that brim with dry extract that buffers most but not all of the firm and mildly rustic tannic spine. I very much like the overall intensity, balance and impressive length. 2017+