"89-91 Points - Allen Meadows, Burghound
Outstanding Top value - Sweetspot
80% whole clusters
This is also firmly reduced though there is much better density and richness to the well-detailed and overtly mineral-driven medium weight flavors that display a bitter cherry pit character on the youthfully austere, firm and built-to-age finale. This is potentially excellent and it's rare to find Marsannay with this level of quality. If you can find it, buy it."
Allen Meadows, Burghound
Sylvain Pataille is a consulting enologist to some of the biggest names in the Côte d'Or. With his brother Laurent, he now farms 15 ha of vineyards located exclusively in Marsannay and described 2019 as a "fascinating vintage that gave us incredibly fresh and vibrant wines and quite frankly, I can't explain how that happened. While there were of course differences, including a few significant ones, but even so, they weren't that different. So how one produced very ripe wines that are distinctly marked by the vintage and the other, also coming from a very hot and dry vintage, produced much fresher and more terroir-driven wines, just isn't obvious to explain. We picked slowly over a long period of time, which is to say from the 6th to the 23rd of September and we could do this because the fruit was so clean and there was no disease pressure. Yields though were completely different from 2018, which was generous, but in 2019 they were only around 30 hl/ha in pinot and only 20 to 25 hl/ha in chardonnay.
I used a very high percentage of whole clusters and did vinify quite softly as the bunches were quite tiny, which gave high ratios of solid to liquid that explain at least some of why the wines seem so dense. Stylistically, the 2019 reds are hard to easily compare with another recent vintage so I would suggest a rough mix of two-thirds 2017 and one-third 2018 as the wines are ripe but they also have very good energy and transparency."
AM - I have made this observation before but it's worth underscoring that there is perhaps no one in the Côte de Nuits, with the possible exception of Cyril Audoin (see herein), that does more with less in terms of producing top quality wines from less prestigious appellations. If you aren't familiar with the Pataille wines, then I strongly suggest that you make their acquaintance - your pocketbook will thank you.
