Wine Advisor
Henri Boillot, Corton Charlemagne Grand Cru 2017
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
The 2017 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru is another example where I feel there are some sulfur issues on the nose, though they are slight and should integrate with time. The palate is well balanced with crisp acidity, taut and fresh, leading to a spicy, ginger-tinged finish. This showed marked improvement in the glass. Tasted blind at the annual Burgfest tasting in Savigny-lès-Beaune.
Reviewed by: Stephen Tanzer
Pale, bright yellow. Pristine but reticent aromas of yellow peach, smoky silex and spices; this wine is never in a fruity style, says Boillot. At once saline in an oyster shell way and sweet in the mouth, but buffered by rocky minerality. This powerful, bracing wine is certainly not about fruit. Finishing with an element of tannic structure that reminded me of a red wine, this wine is hard to assess today but already shows outstanding saline length. Boillot picked this fruit on September 1, at the end of his harvest.
Reviewed by: William Kelley
The superb 2017 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru exhibits a youthfully reserved bouquet of lemon oil, white flowers, smoky reduction and wet stones. On the palate, it's full-bodied, deep and phenolic, with chewy extract and almost tannic structure, that is more in keeping with a red wine, rather than a white. Long, focused and incisive, it's a mineral expression of Corton-Charlemagne that's built for the cellar.
Reviewed by: James Suckling
This is a bold and richly textured wine for a Grand Cru site that’s famous for raciness and a rather sleek body. Plenty of banana puree and candied orange character with a touch of fresh garlic. Powerful, but with quite a fresh acidity at the slightly weighty finish. Drink now.
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.
