Wine Advisor
Henri Boillot, Corton Charlemagne Grand Cru 2012
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
The 2012 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru is well-defined on the nose that opens up with freshly sliced lime, beeswax and honeysuckle aromas. The palate is well-balanced with good weight on the entry. This is a mouth-filling Corton-Charlemagne armed with impressive fruit intensity and tension toward the citrus-driven finish. Excellent! Drink now-2025. Importers: Massanois Imports, Washington, DC; tel. (202) 470-6769, Cynthia Hurley French Wines, West Newton, MA Tel 617-965-4251 www.cynthiahurley.com and Chelsea Ventures, LLC, 1601 South Canal St, Chicago, IL 60616 tel. 847-920-5052. Also through several importers in the UK.
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
Tasted blind at the Burgundy 2012 tasting in Beaune. The 2012 Corton Charlemagne Grand Cru from Henri Boillot has quite a powerful bouquet with touches of dried honey and yellow flowers, though you have to swerve around noticeable reduction. The palate has decent weight, quite forward in the mouth with bitter lemon and dried orange peel notes. The finish is missing finesse and poise at first but it recovers to a degree if not quite fulfilling all its ambition. Give it a couple more years to find its groove.
About the Producer
Domaine Henri Boillot, located in the wine-producing village of Meursault in the Cote de Beaune, Burgundy, France, is a winery with a long history of quality. The vineyards of Château Boileau are located in the Côtes de Bern and Cote de Nuits appellations. The grapes for the white wines are mainly produced in the Grand Cru and Premier Cru of Prigny-Montrachet, where the soil is mainly brown limestone with occasional limestone clay soils, giving the white wines a complex and elegant taste. The grapes for the red wines come mainly from the first growths of the Volnay appellation, where the soils are mainly schist and limestone, giving the wines aromatic intensity and finesse. Château Boisrot follows traditional winemaking techniques. When the grapes reach optimum ripeness, they are picked by hand and transported to the winery. In the winery, the grapes are carefully selected and destemmed by the winery workers in order to select the best quality fruit. For the white wines, the grapes are pressed after breaking their skins and the must is then poured into fermenters where it is partially fermented and transferred to new French oak barrels for maturation. Unlike white wines, red wines are made by placing the broken skins of the grapes directly into the fermenters, allowing the skins to come into contact with the juice to extract the right amount of pigments, tannins and flavours. After fermentation, all red wines are matured in new French oak barrels, allowing oxygen to penetrate through the grain and soften the tannins, giving the wine a smooth texture and complex aromas. Currently, all of Château Boisrot's white wines are made from Chardonnay, a fresh and fruity wine that has been described as the 'star of white wines' in Burgundy. The red wines are all made from Pinot Noir, a rich and powerful wine that has received a great deal of praise from wine critics and wine reviewers.
