Wine Advisor
Henri Boillot, Volnay 1er Cru Les Fremiets 2011
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
A big, firm wine, the 2011 Volnay Les Fremiets boasts tremendous balance of fruit, acidity and structure. Firm tannins support layers of rich, explosive fruit through to an intense finish laced with dark stone fruits, cinnamon, new leather, crushed rocks and menthol. The Fremiets seems to reveal new shades of expression as it sits in the glass, giving a good idea of what will develop in the coming years.
Reviewed by: Stephen Tanzer
Deep red-ruby. Highly perfumed, musky aromas of black raspberry and smoky minerality. Large-scaled, round and rich but not yet complex; less creamy and fine-grained than the Chevrets, showing a youthful toughness from the calcaire-rich soil. Despite the fact that this was the first pinot parcel Boillot picked in 2011, this wine relies more on its big, ripe tannins than on its acids for balance. Really saturates the palate on the aftertaste.
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
Tasted blind at the Burgundy 2011 horizontal tasting in Beaune. Very deep and lucid in color, Henri Boillot’s Volnay 1er Cru Frémiets 2011 has a modern bouquet with succulent red cherries, blackberry and cassis fruit, floral notes developing with time. The palate is very solid with a lot of oak that submerges the fruit toward the dense finish. This feels rather overdone and generic compared to its peers.
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.
