Domaine Meo Camuzet - Corton Perrieres 2016
Price: $299.96
Sale Price: $259.00
| Producer | Domaine Meo Camuzet |
| Country | France |
| Region | Burgundy |
| Varietal | Pinot Noir |
| Vintage | 2016 |
| Sku | 791404 |
| Size | 750ml |
Corton Les Perrières is one of the six Grand Cru bottlings from Domaine Méo-Camuzet. The vineyard lies just north of Aloxe-Corton in a 0.67-hectare parcel planted in 1953 and 1954, making the vines over 70 years old. The name "Perrières" refers to the stony nature of the site—its soils are littered with round, often pink-colored stones that are said to lend a striking minerality to the wine. Though the soil is relatively deep, its rocky structure persists throughout, and the east-facing slope provides ideal ripening conditions.
Despite Corton’s reputation for firm, austere wines that require long aging, Méo-Camuzet’s Les Perrières shows a more nuanced personality. It opens with a sense of linearity and firmness, but unfolds with a supple underlying structure and a finely mineral-driven finish.
In the cellar, Méo-Camuzet handles the fruit with great precision: hand-harvested bunches are sorted carefully on conveyor belts, with up to 20% of the crop discarded to ensure quality. A cool pre-fermentation maceration of 3–5 days precedes fermentation in temperature-controlled concrete vats, lasting 2–3 weeks. Minimal sulfur is used, and punch-downs are reserved for the latter stages of vinification to avoid excessive extraction. After 17 months of aging in fine-grained new oak and older barrels, the wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered entirely by gravity.
Burghound: 92-94 Points
A slightly riper and definitely spicier nose offers up notes of essence of plum, violet and freshly turned earth. The rich, full-bodied and solidly powerful imposingly-scaled flavors once again brim with dry extract as the old vines are very much in evidence, all wrapped in a strikingly persistent finish. This is a relatively rare Corton that is clearly built for the long-term yet the richness and sap are such that this should also be approachable after only 5-ish years or so.
Vinous Media: 92-95 Points
(13.5% alcohol, which Jean-Nicolas Méo described as "almost low for the year"): Bright ruby-red. A fruit bomb on the nose, offering almost liqueur-like scents of black cherry and dark raspberry but with considerably more energy than the Perrières. Then less sweet on the palate than the nose would suggest, displaying seriously dense, plush dark fruit flavors supported by plush tannins. Finishes with terrific length and surprising energy. Méo noted that he picked this fruit early enough (September 24) to retain verve. These vines on the Ladoix-Serrigny side of the Corton hill avoided the frost in 2016. (
