2010 Corton-Pougets Grand Cru

The top 2010 Red Burgundies are now virtually impossible to find, so it was a real treat to taste these nine gorgeous, reference-point wines together. The goal of this seminar, which I curated at Pebble Beach Food & Wine, was to highlight a number of Burgundy’s finest terroirs ands most representative producers. I was joined on the panel by Master Sommeliers Larry Stone and Alan Murray, and winemaker Rajat Parr. All of the wines showed exceptionally well in what turned out to be a fabulous morning filled with great Burgundy and equally stimulating conversation. For more background on the wines, readers might enjoy this short video I shot just before the tasting. As Burgundy fans know, the 2010 growing season did not get off to a great start. A devastating winter frost killed a number of vines, especially in the low, flat-lying sectors close to the Route Nationale. Poor weather during flowering caused significant issues with coulure and millerandage. Conditions improved markedly during the last few weeks of the season, always the most critical time of the year. The 2010s combine excellent maturity levels from naturally occurring low yields with lively acidity that is the result of a long, cool growing season. Most importantly of all, the wines are highly site-specific. At their best, the 2010s are stunning wines that capture the essence of what makes Burgundy so thrilling. For more on 2010, readers might enjoy taking a look back at my initial thoughts on the vintage and wines.

I tasted an amazing range of 2010 reds at Jadot with long-term winemaker Jacques Lardière and his successor Frédéric Barnier. In order to make this large section of the report easier to read, I have broken up the wines into the Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits. Lardière and Barnier told me they were quite worried about the prospects for the harvest upon their return from summer vacations in August, but the year was saved by a perfect September. Yields are down 25-50% because of the frost and cold weather earlier in the year, but overall quality is very high. Lardière and Barnier also noted that early on it appeared that there would be a wide gap in quality between the Côte de Beaune and the Côte de Nuits, but over time that gap narrowed to some extent. Still, there is little question the vintage was more challenging in the Côte de Beaune because of a rainier summer and overall higher precipitation throughout the year.

I normally taste the new vintage of red wines in Jadot's massive, sepulchral barrel cellar, where this marathon routinely requires three or four hours. But it was even more intimidating to arrive this year to see 55 sample bottles laid out on a table. And that's far from the whole collection of Jadot reds in 2010, said Frederic Barnier, who will succeed long-time winemaker Jacques Lardiere when he retires at the end of this year (I'll believe it when I see it, as Lardiere is like the energizer bunny.) Barnier noted that grape sugars were typically around 12.5% in 2010, prior to a half-degree or so of chaptalization. All the wines were racked between May and August of '11, and will be racked a second time for the assemblage in March. The wines were kept in roughly 60% new oak until the first racking (a level higher than that of 2009), and are now in about 30% new barrels. Barnier noted that Jadot started harvesting on the Cote de Nuits on September 24, before beginning in Pommard, Volnay and Beaune, because the vegetative cycle was finished and the skins were beginning to wither. Fruit in the Cote de Beaune required patience as there was at least two more inches of rain here in August than on the Cote de Nuits. Yields were higher on the Cote de Beaune, Barnier added, "sometimes too much for the year, and the wines are generally not at the same level of quality."