Wine Advisor
Henri Boillot, Pommard 1er Cru Les Rugiens 2015
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Stephen Tanzer
Good medium red Reticent but highly complex, soil-driven nose suggests redcurrant, iron, mocha, dried flowers and chimney smoke. Like liquid silk in the mouth, conveying an element of sappy concentration and thickness of texture that goes beyond the 2015 Volnays from this producer. Incredibly fine-grained for Rugiens, finishing very long, gripping and mineral-tinged, with a serious spine of tannins. An outstanding Rugiens in the making. This really provokes the salivary glands.
Reviewed by: Stephen Tanzer
(30% vendange entier; 50% new oak; the Boillots combined their fruit from the upper and lower portions of Rugiens for the vinification): Bright, full red. Minty high tones to the aromas of redcurrant, spices and rose petal. Penetrating and high-pitched, with vibrant flavors of redcurrant, iron and tobacco accented by mint and complicated by saline minerality. The intense, rising, palate-staining finish conveys an impression of power without being at all aggressive. No easy sweetness here but offers an uncommon blend of silkiness and energy. Guillaume Boillot noted that he normally finds Rugiens harder and more rustic than this wine.
Reviewed by: William Kelley
Boillot's 2015 Pommard 1er Cru les Rugiens is excellent, offering up a reserved bouquet of red and black cherry, wild berries, rich soil, spice and venison. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, dense and concentrated, with a serious chassis of tannin which is almost completely evolved in a deep core of succulent fruit, only asserting itself on the finish. Along with the Clos Vougeot, this is the most manifestly built for the long haul of all Boillot's reds.
Reviewed by: Stephen Tanzer
(30% vendange entier; 50% new oak; the Boillots combined their fruit from the upper and lower portions of Rugiens for the vinification): Bright, full red. Minty high tones to the aromas of redcurrant, spices and rose petal. Penetrating and high-pitched, with vibrant flavors of redcurrant, iron and tobacco accented by mint and complicated by saline minerality. The intense, rising, palate-staining finish conveys an impression of power without being at all aggressive. No easy sweetness here but offers an uncommon blend of silkiness and energy. Guillaume Boillot noted that he normally finds Rugiens harder and more rustic than this wine.
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.
