VOSNE ROMANÉE

2017 1er Cru Suchots Domaine J. Confuron Cotetidot

EN PRIMEUR

This is heady stuff. The seductive dark fruit builds and builds. There is tremendous concentration and richness on the palate. The tannins are enveloping at this point but it's the perfect frame for all that ripeness. This will doubtless need quite a bit of time in bottle but it shows tremendous promise. A magnificent wine in the making. Drinking range: 2028 - 2040L&S (Jan 2019)

* 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.

The 2017 Vosne-Romanée Les Suchots 1er Cru has a lovely, well-defined bouquet of brambly dark berry fruit, hawthorn, wilted rose petal and a touch of incense. The palate is slightly bitter on the entry and shows more extraction than its peers. Sweet but a little woody and chocolaty on the finish. I hope this resolves itself with bottle age. Tasted blind at the Burgfest 2017 tasting. Drinking range: 2024 - 2038 Rating: 86 Neal Martin, www.vinous.com (Jan 2022)

Rich deep purple, a little vegetal at first sniff but this should clean up and become interesting. There is a volume of dark fruit but it is a little dry at the finish. Has not quite timed its jump for glory correctly. Tasted: September 2021 Rating: 89 Jasper Morris - Inside Burgundy  (Sept 2021)

(the domaine is the largest holder in Suchots with an incredible 2.16 ha). Little else is discernible beyond strong reduction and wood toast. More positively is the lovely mid-palate mouthfeel to the medium weight flavors that display fine power and verve before culminating in a lingering if moderately strict and austere finale. This too is going to require extended bottle age as it’s exceptionally firm, indeed even robust. Drinking range: 2035 - Rating: 91-94 Allen Meadows, www.Burghound.com (Jan 2019)

Bright garnet. Good combination of richness and drive with the former definitely winning. Just not quite refreshing enough for me, but others may lap-up such a bonbon. Drinking range: 2022 - 2032 Rating: 16.5 Jancis Robinson OBE MW - www.JancisRobinson.com (Jan 2019)

Beguiling rose petal aromatics. Rich depth to the texture. velvety. Deep and full and powerful. This is dense and compact. There is smooth grip to the tannins. I like this a lot. Rating: 18.75 Sarah Marsh MW, The Burgundy Briefing (Dec 2018)

Yves Confuron makes very distinctive red wines, picked late and fermented with 100% whole bunches. They can be a little forbidding in their youth, but age well. This is sappy and intense, with firm tannins and plenty of grip, hints of tobacco, damson and black tea, and a long, savoury finish. Come back in a decade. Drinking range: 2027 - 2035 Rating: 94 Tim Atkin MW - Decanter (Nov 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'.

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