Rodolphe Demougeot Pommard 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 grow on clay-limestone soil. Blend of two localities: En Bœuf and La Rue au Port Area of the plot
Winemaking: The Pinot Noirs are harvested in small boxes, in order to preserve the berries. After passing through a sorting table, the grapes are destemmed and then placed in vats for a period of 12 to 20 days. After pressing, the wine is aged in barrels for 12 to 14 months, including 20% new wood, and 2 to 3 months in vats, before being bottled by gravity, depending on the lunar calendar
Color: Brilliant, deep, intense red
Nose: Fruity and floral notes on the nose
Palate: Beautiful balance on the palate, with silky tannins
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.
