Rodolphe Demougeot Savigny Les Beaune Les Bourgeots 2018
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 1950 and grow on a topsoil mixture of white/brown clay (33%), sand (11%), silt (40%) and limestone (10%) on limestone bedrock. Vineyard is located on a flat slope, facing southeast and has an altitude of 240m
Winemaking: 100% of the grapes are destemmed and placed in cement and stainless steel vats. The grape must is chilled down to eight degrees and then allowed to start a spontaneous fermentation that usually lasts about two to three weeks depending on the vintage conditions. They are lightly extracted using the infusion approach, which is to say very little is done to disturb the grapes during the fermentation and maceration. Once pressed, it’s settled in a tank overnight and gravity-fed into the barrel where it stays without racking until preparations for bottling. As he does with the white wines, the first sulfite addition is made at bottling and they are spared excess use of new oak during the aging. Aged for 14-16 months in 75% old French oak and 25% new
Color: Intense red
Nose: Aromas of red fruits
Palate: Soft and melted tannins, elegant and fine on the palate
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.
