Domaine de la Vougeraie Reviews

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 2021 Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru is slightly more oxidative in style compared to the Bâtard-Montrachet, with grilled walnut and a subtle florlike scent emerging with time. The palate is balanced with a vibrant opening. It has a little more horsepower than the Bâtard-Montrachet and a spicier finish. This gains intensity in the glass and does eventually overtake the Bâtard.

The 2021 Charlemagne Grand Cru comes from two parcels, the En Charlemagne lieu-dit picked a week after Le Charlemagne. This has one of my favourite noses from Vougeraie; it's quite refined and complex, more mineraldriven with hints of dried white flowers. The palate is well balanced with a tangy opening, fresh and crisp with a touch of bitter lemon and orange rind towards the finish. This should age well in bottle and conveys a sense of class.

The 2020 Corton Clos du Roi Grand Cru contains 100% whole bunch this year. I appreciate the aromatics here - well-defined, fragrant and quite floral, there offers fine mineralité and tension. The palate is mediumbodied with supple tannins, very harmonious with a bead of acidity that lends finesse and elegant towads the finish. This is clever winemaking and a successful Corton. Excellent.

The 2016 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru was touched more by the frost than other vineyards owned by Vougeraie, and yet they still managed a supremely well-crafted and delicious wine. It has a focused and mineral-rich bouquet with scents of oyster shell and something estuarine on the nose. The palate has a feisty and lively entry, a keen line of acidity, more depth and concentration than the Bienvenue and with a good persistence on the finish. This is excellent.

A pungent nose presently consists of wood toast and reduction. Interestingly the massively constituted flavors are even bigger, richer and more powerful and the copious amount of dry extract is seriously impressive and this is just as well as the tannic spine is markedly prominent on the driving and strikingly long finish. This is a brute of wine yet like the Mazoyères it manages to avoid being rustic though with that being said, no one is likely to find this to be particularly refined. A "buy and forget you own it" wine.

The 2014 Charmes-Chambertin les Mazoyères Grand Cru includes 80% whole cluster fruit this year, a high percentage due to the age of the vines planted in 1902. There is fine delineation here, precise black cherry and cranberry scents with a touch of cold granite. It is a nose that demands respect, deservedly so. The palate is medium-bodied with fine, supple black and red fruit, very pure and smooth with a graceful, marmalade-tinged finish that lingers. This should grow up to be a very seductive, comely Charmes-Chambertin with a long future ahead.

There is just over one hectare (2.47 acres) of pinot noir in this walled vineyard, where some of the vines date back to 1901, the youngest palnted in 1983. Farmed under biodynamics since 2001, it produced a mood-altering wine in this vintage, sparkling with freshness, the brightness of the color itself showing the life in the wine. It surges with energy across the mid-palate, a revelation in fraise de bois flavor. The wine has not issues, just layer upon layer of delicate red fruit and Vougeot earth.

A regal, majestic Burgundy, the 2012 Musigny is totally alive in the glass. Sweet, perfumed aromatics meld into red berries, mint and anise and wild flowers in an impeccable, beautifully layered wine. The 2012 will naturally take a number of years to peak