Domaine de Montille Corton Clos du Roi Grand Cru 2020
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Jasper
Morris
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Living up to the reputation of its pedigree, De Montille's Clos du Roi is complex and profound with firmness, finesse and endless freshness.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Super-ripe blackberry and plum fruit touched with leather, spice and smoke. The texture is impressively dense and concentrated, yet the wine never loses its silky elegance which lingers invitingly on the long finish. This is a really impressive Corton Clos du Roi. The domaine owns a parcel of 0.83ha in the centre of the vineyard at mid-slope. The organic-certified vines are fermented with a substantial proportion of whole clusters and aged in 30% new casks.
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Jasper Morris
Two thirds whole cluster, just over 13%. Heady bright purple. While the fruit is ripe, it has not lost its class and elegance. After a while the whole bunches add a further refinement. Liqueur cherry. Beautiful balance on the first part of the palate, drier tannins behind but the fruit comes through.
Barrel Sample: 92-94
Other Vintages
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Robert
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Robert
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Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Prevailing over the charming village of Aloxe, the hill of Corton actually commands the entire appellation. Corton is the only Grand Cru for Pinot Noir in the entire Côte de Beaune. Its Grand Crus red wines can be described simply as “Corton” or Corton hyphenated with other names. These vineyards cover the southeast face of the hill of Corton where soils are rich in red chalk, clay and marl.
Dense and austere when young, the best Corton Pinot Noir will peak in complexity and flavor after about a decade, offering some of the best rewards in cellaring among Côte de Beaune reds. Pommard and Volnay offer similar potential.
The great whites of the village are made within Corton-Charlemagne, a cooler, narrow band of vineyards at the top of the hill that descends west towards the village of Pernand-Vergelesses. Here the thin and white stony soils produce Chardonnay of exceptional character, power and finesse. A minimum of five years in bottle is suggested but some can be amazing long after. Fully half of Aloxe-Corton is considered Grand Cru.