"Deep colour with lovely layers of fruit, approachable and drinking well already"
Michel’s son, Pierre, took over the running of the domaine in spring 2019 – but Michel continues to lend his wisdom and experience.
The Gros family have been vignerons in the village of Vosne-Romanée since 1830. Domaine Michel Gros was created in 1995 when Jean Gros retired and divided the domaine amongst his three children. Michel inherited some magnificent parcels of vines and in 1997 the Ecard family entrusted Michel with the running of their 3.5 hectares in Vosne Romanée and Nuits-Saint-Georges. They now have 18 hectares under vine – half in the Côtes de Nuits and half in the Hautes Côtes. They ensure that yields are kept low, everything is hand-picked and there is a rigorous sorting prior to total destemming.
During fermentation, at a maximum of 32 degrees, they use both pigeage and remontage to ensure a gentle extraction. Racking is kept to a minimum. They use between 30% new oak, for the village wines and 50-80% for the 1er crus.
The resulting wines offer great purity and intensity of flavour, and seduce rather than assault the senses. The village wines are from very small vineyard parcels and are ripe, sensual, poised and drink beautifully when young. Particular mention should be given to their 7-hectare parcel of “Fontaine St Martin”– which has the same soil and subsoil as the top part of the hill of Corton – and gives wines of incredible purity and class. Nuits-St-Georges comes from 4 parcels on the Vosne side and is softer and open- knit, whilst Nuits “Chaliots” is on the Premeaux side and has more depth and structure. The 1er Cru Aux Brulees is a wonderful 0.6 ha plot on 30 cm of topsoil, then straight into marble. Clos de Réas, his flagship wine and a 2-hectare family owned ‘monopole’ since 1860 is magnificent. Richebourg and Echezeaux have been added in recent vintages
Allen Meadows, Burghound
Michel Gros' son Pierre is taking over the domaine bit by bit and while Michel did stop in to say hello, it's clear that the reins are passing to a new generation. Pierre briefly noted that "we picked from the 29th of August and brought in super-clean fruit that was ripe, both in terms of potential alcohols but also phenolically. Yields were variable from one terroir to another but on average, they were down 40%, which is even more than the roughly 25% we obtained in 2019. This meant that our volumes came in between 25 to 30 hl/ha and remember we have a lot of Hautes Côtes. We actually had a normal number of berries but there was just no juice in them. This made for very dense musts and so it was necessary to extract carefully. To help with this, we shortened the cuvaison to just 10 days on average. Potential alcohols were quite good at between 13.5 and 14% so nothing was chaptalized."
