Rodolphe Demougeot Beaune Les Beaux Fougets 2020 / 2021
Type: Red
Country: France
Region: Burgundy, Cote de Beaune
Grape Variety: 100% Pinot Noir
Climate: Oceanic climate with a semi-continental influence, frequent rains all year round, cold winters and hot summers
Terroir: Vines planted in 1961 and grow on clay-limestone-sand soil
Winemaking: The Pinot Noir grapes are harvested in small crates to preserve the berries. After a sorting table, the grapes are destemmed and then placed in vats for 12 to 20 days. After pressing, the wine matures for a year in barrels, 10% of which is new wood, and 2 months in vats, before being bottled by gravity according to the lunar calendar
Color: Intense garnet
Nose: Fresh cherry aromas
Palate: Ample, deep, with firm but fine tannins, refreshed by a touch of acidity, before stretching into a long liquorice finish
About the Winery:
The path to Rodolphe Demougeot’s current level of quality took a while after taking over the family Domaine in 1992. Since then, he’s amassed eight hectares of vines in the Côte de Beaune and year by year upped the ante on his attention to detail in the cellar and vineyard, raising his own personal bar and capturing the attention of his illustrious neighbours with more enviable vineyard stables in Meursault and Pommard.
Rodolphe explains that he “learned how to do perfect chemical farming from his family and had to deprogram his vineyards and himself, which took a lot of time”—a courageous and evolved sense of self and humility to admit. Another telling quote of his candid and honest character is that he needed to learn to be a good farmer first, and then learn to improve his performance in the cellar. If only everyone approached life with this kind of blatant and unflinching honesty about their own process!
Since the mid-2000s, synthetic treatments of herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers were systematically abandoned one step at a time. Then his interest in the inexplicable but observable energies of the cosmos and its influence on grapes and wine came to be central to his decision-making. The moon is his compass for the timing of processes during growing, farming, picking, racking, and bottling.
Today, Rodolphe’s vineyards are impressively farmed and have as much life as any organic or biodynamic vineyard we’ve set foot in. He’s renowned for the quality of his farming by top growers in his area, and with all the talent in his hometown of Meursault, that says something. He ploughs most of his vineyards by tractor, but in some of his top sites, like the Pommard, 1er Cru Les Charmots, he works with a horse. His cluster selection is made early in the season to concentrate the energy of the vines to fewer clusters through the fruiting season in the pursuit of quality over quantity. Everything is done by hand and under severe scrutiny within his humble Côte d’Or holdings.
