2023 Aloxe-Corton Les Fournières 1er Cru

It is always a pleasure visiting Nathalie Tollot in Chorey-lès-Beaune. Refreshingly, she is a winemaker that candidly admits that the sudden unexpected heatwave threw a spanner in the works. Like many others, the harvest was all planned out when the mercury suddenly started to rise and temperatures hit the mid-30s. They began picking on September 5.

“Our parents used to wait two weeks to get one degree more in potential alcohol,” she told me. “But the later-picked fruit reached 14.5% and 15.0% alcohol. We had to expedite the harvest as we have 25 hectares of vine, so the team had to pick all hours of the day, finishing with the Bourgogne Rouge.” As a consequence, this is another portfolio that you can divide down the middle between early- and late-picked cuvées. The Bourgogne Rouge is a wine that seems so jammy that I wondered whether I should spread it on toast. That is not attributing blame upon the winemaking team—it is just a cuvée that was sacrificed to ensure the quality of their Premier and Grand Crus. Complicating matters, some of their vines are planted with Pinot Noir Très Fin, which tends to produce more concentrated berries. This turns into a disadvantage in warmer seasons, underwriting why the Corton-Bressandes is better than the Corton. On the other hand, in a cooler vintage like 2024, Pinot Noir Très Fin is beneficial.