NUITS SAINT GEORGES

2017 Domaine J. Confuron Cotetidot

EN PRIMEUR

Intense again. Toffee and chewy dates and hard plums. This is brooding and dark and loaded with fruit. Fine tannins, long and intense. Smooth yet quite dense for now but it flows so well in a Vosne sort of way. This is firm still and tightly wound yet, sexy and sleek - the future looks great but we must be patient! Drinking range: 2022 - 2030L&S (Nov 2018)

* This is a pre-shipment/primeur offer. All orders are accepted under the TERMS of this offer which differ from the terms of the rest of the site.

(from 80+ year old vines in Bas de Combes). The wood treatment is a bit more evident though not intrusive on the aromas of cassis, warm earth and the sauvage that are also notably ripe. There is very good richness with even more volume to the sappy and muscular flavors that are rustic but complex and long. A fine Nuits villages that is also very clearly built to age. Drinking range: 2029 - Rating: 89-91 Allen Meadows, www.Burghound.com (Jan 2019)

True to the Confuron-Cotetidot style, which varies very little from vintage to vintage, this is rich, intense and brooding, with lots of sappy, tannic, stemmy flavours and understated wood. Dense, layered and full of promise, it's a Nuits village wine that is well worth cellaring. Drinking range: 2025 - 2030 Rating: 92 Tim Atkin MW - Decanter (Jan 2019)

This is ripe and generous. Full and fleshy on the strike. Black fruits, ripe plums, even prunes and chocolate notes aplenty. The tannins have a chewy liquorice bite to them...making the finish fresher than the VR. Rating: 16.15 Sarah Marsh MW, The Burgundy Briefing (Dec 2018)

Vignerons since the seventeenth century, the Confuron family has always selected and propagated vines to ensure that their plant material produces the highest quality, and they even have a clone of Pinot named after them - 'Pinot Confuron'.

The domaine has several Grands Cru vineyards as well as two hectares of the great Vosne Romanée Premier Cru 'Les Suchots'. There are around 12 hectares in all. The vines have never seen chemical weedkillers, and are ploughed and managed organically.

The Confurons have always used whole-bunch fermentation, picking very late, which really is a necessity if the stems are to be properly ripe and not give green flavours to the wine. A bit like the Thévenets with their whites in the Mâconnais, they pick so much later that they can seem to have different vintages to everyone else. Yves thinks that 2007 was their great vintage of the first decade of this millennium, and he'd probably be the only grower in the Côte de Nuits who would say that. Yves also makes the wines at Domaine de Courcelin Pommard, in the same way.

Yves, opinionated and laconical as ever, dismisses those who make pale wines by 'infusion' and says that failing to get the whole bunches properly ripe - and using all the bunch - is failing to get everything the terroir can offer. The wines he makes are dark, richly concentrated, and often hard to taste in their development, but experience shows that they age brilliantly. Defending his decision to pick late, he once said 'you miss the differentiation between vintages' if you don't - making 'cut-and-paste' wines which are the same every year... if you pay for a seat at the opera, you don't want to hear a variety singer'.

ORDERING VIA OUR WEBSITE:

  • We will respond as quickly as possible with confirmation of your order and your invoice.

Please note that certain wines are on very tight allocations and will first be offered to customers who buy across the range. If you have any queries, please email our primeurs team or speak to your usual L&S contact.

ORDERING VIA EMAIL:

Please feel free to email us at any time. This list can include wines listed as available on the website, as well as those marked 'To Be Advised'. We will reply as soon as possible with confirmation of what we can offer.

STORAGE OPTIONS:

Wines bought en primeur are scheduled to arrive in the UK over the course of the next eighteen months. If you do not wish to take home delivery, you may wish to consider where you would like the wines shipped on arrival in the UK. Lea & Sandeman offers duty paid and in bond storage through a dedicated storage company called Elephant Storage. For more details on the terms and fees associated with storage please go to our Storage Homepage or contact our primeurs team for more information.

While helpful, we do not require a firm commitment on delivery destination to process your primeur order at this stage. Our team will be in contact with you when your wines arrive in the UK to confirm the necessary delivery details.

BURGUNDY EN PRIMEUR FAQ

OFFER: All wines are offered subject to availability and final confirmation.

PRICING: All prices are quoted IN BOND ex-VAT, by the case size stated. Please double check that the desired case size does match what is being offered as wines are variously listed in threes, sixes, dozens, halves and larger formats.

DELIVERY - TIMING: This is a primeur offer so the wines are not yet physically available for delivery. They will be shipped to the UK over the next eighteen months. Generally, wines are shipped to your nominated location once the whole order has landed in our London City Bond account. If you require wines to be delivered by a certain date, please advise us at the time of ordering.

DELIVERY - FEES: In bond delivery to an Elephant Storage account (for more information see 'Storage Options' opposite) is free of charge. Transfer of wines to any third-party bond (i.e. not Elephant Storage) will incur an administration charge of £16.50 + VAT for all orders under £1,000. Please indicate if you would like the wine duty paid and a duty & VAT invoice will be raised once all the wines on your order are available for shipment. Once the relevant duty & VAT has been settled, we will ship the wines to your nominated address as per our normal duty paid Delivery Terms.

PAYMENT: All orders will be invoiced for immediate payment by cheque, cash, debit card or cleared funds to our account. We regret that we cannot accept credit cards for primeur orders. We reserve the right to apply a dunning charge of 2% per month on invoices unpaid after 30 days.