Red Auxey-Duresses wines are made from Pinot Noir grapes.
- 10,000 plants/hectare.
- Pruning: Guyot or Cordon de Royat.
- Harvested by hand.
- Yield: 45 hl/hectare in a standard year.
Colour: beautiful ruby red colour.
Nose: notes of red fruits and liquorice.
Palate: great elegant structure, well-balanced.
Drink with pan-fried veal sweetbreads, grilled white meats, fried chicken, pork tenderloin, veal stew, or rack of lamb, poultry, chicken salad and a tasty pieces of tender and creamy cheese.
Serve ideally at around 14-15°C. (57-59°F.).
Drink now or keep in the cellars for 5 years even more, in good conditions.
On the outskirts of Meursault and Monthélie, in the Burgundian Côte de Beaune, Auxey-Duresses covers 170 hectares of which 40 hectares are for white wine.
This vineyard is behind Volnay and Meursault on the route the “Knights” would take in the Middle Age to get from Beaune to Autun and pick up the path to the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage.
- Very pebbly soil, marly-chalk.
- Steep hillsides.
- East and south facing.
- Altitude: about 250 m.
The grapes are harvested by hand and sorted manually on arrival at the winery. All the grapes were de-stemmed. Cold maceration follows for 4 days at 8° to 10°C. (46-50°F). Then, 15 days of alcoholic fermentation with regular punching down and pumping over (twice a day). Selected yeast used.
Ageing in 100 % Burgundian oak barrels (French oak only) of 228 litres with 25% of news one. After 12 months of maturing process, the wine is racked and delicately filtrated for bottling. No fining.
This 2022 vintage promises to be one of great quality.
We had a rather rainy November, December and January, and February and March were rather cool, which slowed down the emergence of the buds and in turn prevented the frost problems that we had last year.
May was very, very hot providing great flowering conditions. June was then a little chaotic weather wise, as we had some warm mornings and then with violent storms after midday, sometimes with hail. However, at least nothing really bad in our Burgundy.
The harvests started in Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits around 29 August, which is still relatively early and we had to deal with diverse levels of ripening. Some parcels really stood up to the heat and have given wonderfully ripe grapes. Of course, everything was conditioned by how the vineyard was managed and the amount of exposure. But overall, we had wonderful wines from these parcels, from other parcels which experienced more dehydration. The very high temperatures meant a greater halt in ripening, giving grapes a little less ripe, so we had to wait to harvest them.
By the end of August, we already had fabulous colour extraction and the acidity was very well balanced. All this allowed to be very confident, heading for a great vintage.
In the Chablis area, some winegrowers started harvesting as August was ending, but most of them started harvesting in the first days of September.
The harvesters were relatively unaffected by the rains, which fell either in the late afternoon or at night. The foliage, which was still in good health, benefited from it. Thanks to the rain, juice concentration was limited and the bunches of grapes were able to provide a good balance between sugar content and acidity.
The harvest concluded the third week of September with a smile: neither the frost nor the drought prevented the vineyards from producing close to normal yields. However, the volumes harvested varied from one domain to another, with some estates easily reaching full production while others were below the appellation's yield.
Wines in the making are expressing notes of ripe fruit, pear and peach, while keeping their freshness. They are generous and have a good balance. Quality is definitely there as well.
After a year 2021 disturbed by a poor harvest, this 2022 vintage is a real breath of fresh air.
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