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CONTENTS MADE BY NATURE 6 PINOT NOIR 10 CHARDONNAY 12 CLIMATS OF BURGUNDY 14 VINTAGES 16 CLOS MAREY-MONGE 24 CÔTE DE BEAUNE 32 CÔTE DE NUITS 50 EXPERIENCES 64 ÉCOLE V 84 HOSTED EVENTS 86 CONCIERGE 88 SAY HELLO 90 MADE BY NATURE Perhaps no other agricultural product elicits the human interest and passion in its consumption as wine. We’re obsessed with the nose, the taste, and the pleasure wine brings to the mind and the body. Consumers and professionals travel the world to touch the ground where grapes are grown, meet the artisans producing the wine, and experience the cultures of different winemaking regions. As winemakers, our ultimate goal is to create the purest expression of the grape, the terroir, and the vintage. We know following what Nature intended is the way to make the best-tasting wines. A recent Journal of Wine Economics study of 74,000 wines based on Wine Spectator, The Wine Advocate, and Wine Enthusiast tasting data found organic and biodynamic wines ranked higher than conventional wines by an average of 4.1 percentage points. Unfortunately, more than 95% of the world’s wines are made today with active human intervention. Conventional vineyard management utilizes chemical inputs that block a grape’s full potential and mask the expression of the soils. In the winery, the heavy hand of the winemaker aims to produce precisely the same product year in and year out and all but eliminate the effect of natural conditions on each Michael Baum vintage. CEO & Propriétaire Our work in the vines and the cuverie takes a different approach— embracing rather than attempting to control Nature. Only natural remedies, not chemicals, are used to fight disease in the vineyard. This noninvasive approach continues in the winery, where we work with as little human intervention as possible, enabling each cuvée to evolve as intended. It’s more work than conventional agriculture and winemaking, but the result is better-tasting, healthier wines that fully express the grape, the terroir, and the vintage. Five years ago, we began our collaboration with Nature in Clos Marey-Monge. The opportunity to create a biodynamic environment in a 20-hectare clos surrounded by a two-meter-high stone wall was too significant not to try. What we have witnessed is incredible. Our soils are alive. One-hundred-year-old vines that were bearing little fruit are producing good yields. Our wines are more honest and energetic, displaying extra intensity on the nose and vibration on the palate. Perhaps Nature’s sign that she appreciates our efforts is the increased presence of wildlife among the vines. Producing better-tasting wines and preserving the world all of us depend upon is a powerful idea whose time has come. PINOT NOIR It wasn’t until 1395 when Philippe le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy, banished the Gamay grape, revered by the monks of the Cîteaux Abbey, in favor of Pinot Noir that this delicate and floral cépage established its notoriety. Today if you are drinking a red Burgundy, it is most certainly Pinot Noir. Unlike many grape varieties born out of cross-breeding, Pinot Noir remains very close to the wild vines present in the forests of the Côte d’Or even before Roman times. Don’t expect to find Pinot Noir at any latitude. This grape requires a cool climate like those found in Burgundy, Alsace, Champagne, the Willamette Valley in Oregon, or Central Otago, New Zealand to thrive and display its pure elegance. Capricious, fine-skinned and highly susceptible to vine diseases, Pinot Noir finds its best match in the limestone and clay vineyards of the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune. Red wines from Chambolle-Musigny, Échezeaux, Gevrey-Chambertin, Pommard, or Volnay, for example, are the perfect illustrations of Pinot Noir’s potential. Pinot Noir produced in Burgundy typically displays bright ruby color, aromas of red and black fruits and delicate tannins, but this emblematic grape can also reflect the tiniest variation of the soils. We compare winemaking with Pinot Noir to painting. The landscapes are the soils, the painter is the winemaker, and the colors emerge from the expressions of Pinot Noir. CHARDONNAY Did you know Chardonnay was first the name of a village in Burgundy, located 65 kilometers from Pommard? Unless this village inherited its name from the grape variety. Who knows! One thing is for sure, Chardonnay was born in Burgundy, the result of cross-breeding between Gouais Blanc and Pinot Noir. Now one of the most planted grape varieties across the world, in a total of 41 countries, Chardonnay has proven its ability to adapt to many different environments. You won’t find the same character in a Burgundy Chardonnay and its alter-ego in California. Flexible, Burgundy’s iconic grape variety can accurately interpret the subtle variations of the soils and climats upon which it grows, expressing a multitude of personalities. In Burgundy, Chardonnay unveils many different expressions. While it produces a chiseled and mineral white wine in Chablis, it can also be profound, ample, and structured further south, in the Mâconnais. But it is the Côte de Beaune that offers Chardonnay an unrivaled playground and brings global prestige to the local grape variety. From Montrachet to the hill of Corton, clay and limestone-rich soils create Chardonnays with intense gold color, aromas of white- fleshed fruit lined with floral, creamy, oaky notes, and a smooth, mineral-filled palate. Côte de Beaune Chardonnays remain a unique expression of the Burgundian soils, enhanced by aging in French oak barrels and on fine lees. CLIMATS Nowhere in the world have humans shown such determination to so precisely link a wine to its place of origin as Burgundy. The result is an extremely fragmented collection of vineyards. 1,247 Climats extend from Dijon to Mâcon, and among them are some of the most famous names from the world of wine: Chambertin, Chambolle-Musigny, Vosne-Romanée, Corton- Charlemagne, Meursault Genevrières, and our own Clos Marey-Monge. Thirty million years ago, a granite bedrock covered by a layer of old sea bed sediments collapsed and cracked open. This geologic activity created a giant fault and many other smaller satellite faults which broke up and juxtaposed geological strata of different ages ultimately to form a mosaic of complex soils. Ancient, 160-million-year-old layers of limestone and clay were pushed to the surface, creating the hills which make Burgundy’s Côtes overlooking the plains below. A slow erosion during the Ice Age sculpted the Côtes into two escarpments, Côte de Nuits to the north and Côte de Beaune to the south. Classified by UNESCO in 2015, Burgundy’s Climats are the result of a unique encounter between an extremely diversified subsoil and the unwavering determination of women and men who have been striving for centuries to reveal the potential of the terroirs. Each Climat has its own story – soil type, gradient, altitude, sun exposure, and winemaking techniques – which gives its wines their distinct character. Two Climats situated just meters apart, within the same appellation, growing the same grape variety can produce two uniquely different wines. VINTAGES Have you ever wondered why the vintage appears on the label of a wine? Alongside terroir, grape variety, and human intervention, weather conditions specific to each winegrowing region and vineyard participate to create unique cuvées, each with its own qualities and aging potential. Rain, cold, heat, sun, frost, and hail can vary dramatically from year to year, especially in four-season, continental climates like Burgundy. 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 An early and hot Early spring was A challenging A wet and cold A very wet summer Typical spring A hot, dry summer Sunny spring Beautiful spring Spring was spring preceded the harbinger of and late spring spring, June hail followed June weather and a very preceded by a cold and summer with weather preceded punctuated by a cool summer. chaotic summer was followed by and a stormy hail decreasing hot, dry summer and wet spring with perfectly ripe a sweltering, dry cold periods with Grapes were picked weather patterns. a June hail that summer resulted in grape quanitities. created superb black frost in late grapes harvested summer. Good several frosts and a the last two weeks Harvest occurred lowered overall low yields. Grapes Dry and windy conditions. Harvest April. Yields were the first two weeks yields, with grapes difficult floraison. of September mid-September yields. Harvest were late to ripen conditions in happened in early the lowest of the of September harvested early at Summer was hot with superb fruit and required mid-September. with harvest at the September September, but low past two decades. resulting in the end of August and dry. Harvest quality. Very meticulous sorting. Concentrated end of September. preceded a late vine sugar reserves Harvest took place the best yields and beginning in mid-September aromatic whites, Aromatic, long, and complex Fruity and mineral harvest in the limited yields. in mid-September. in a decade. of September. A with low yields. lively and broad. and vivacious Chardonnays. white wines. Earthy last two weeks of Chardonnays are Elegant and soft Balanced, aromatic promising vintage Rich, well- Complex and Chardonnays. Fruity and spicy and rounded red September. Smooth rich and ample, whites. Complex, Chardonnays. Very for whites and balanced whites tannic reds. Structured and Pinots Noirs with wines. and refreshing Pinot Noirs are fresh reds with expressive and reds. and delicious reds silky Pinots Noirs. an excellent tannic whites. Elegant and colorful, balanced, good acidity. harmonious with a pleasant framework. earthy reds. and fruit forward.