From: Burgundy, France
Varietal: Pinot Noir
Taste & Critical Acclaim: 90 points John Gilman
“The domaine’s 2020 Champs Saint Etienne is a tad less overtly ripe in personality than the straight Marsannay, with more refinement on both the nose and palate. The lovely bouquet offers up scents of black raspberries, black cherries, grilled meats, dark soil tones, a touch of cedar and a smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, complex and deep at the core, with very good soil undertow, ripe tannins and a long, well-balanced and classy finish. Fine juice in the making.” (12/2022)
Jasper Morris
“Another extra deep colour. A touch livelier on the nose, very dark raspberry but a bit fresher and shows more fruit through to the end of the palate with less brutal tannins than the straight Marsannay.” (12/2022)
Wine Advocate
“The 2020 Marsannay Champs Saint Etienne exhibits aromas of sweet cherries, licorice and raspberries, followed by a medium to full-bodied, supple and velvety palate, concluding with a gently oak-inflected finish. This will reward a few years' bottle age. (WK)” (1/2023)
Bill Nanson Burgundy Report: "One of the lieu-dits with the oldest history, nuns replanting in the 1600s – just like Chambertin. Not a monopole – there’s one other producer but Roty is currently the only one with the climat name on a label. Less width, here the nose a little rounder and less expressive despite its perfume. A little smoky, spicy oak is visible in these flavours. Certainly, a more serious wine today but the finish opens out impressively…"(01/2023)
Pairing: Red Marsannay wines are natural pairs for red meats: beef blade or rib steak, flank steak with shallots, steak au poivre, brochettes and kebabs, grilled or roasted pork, slow-cooked or braised meats (we’re sharing a roasted leg of lamb recipe below) and venison. If you’re craving something veggie-focused, stick to mushroom-heavy dishes or meals that play off the rich fruit, deep florals, and spice in the wine. Some examples include pairing this with dishes with caramelized or smoky flavors, winter squashes, or eggplant works well as a base.
Roast Leg of Lamb With Anchovy, Garlic and Rosemary
By Aleksandra Crapanzano
About. Many, many thanks to Alain Junguenet Selection (historically known as Wines of France, Inc.) for the detailed and heartfelt words that follow.
Domaine Joseph Roty boasts one of the largest concentrations of old vines in Burgundy, averaging about 65 years. The domaine is fanatical about old vines, they have some of the oldest in France, the living ambassadors of the affinity the Roty’s so obviously feel for their land.
Coupled with late picking, which further concentrates yields and with fermentation below 30 degrees, and a cuvaison of three weeks, the structure and complexity is consequentially remarkable and the winemaking uncompromising in achieving this. With a little age these wines develop wonderful aromatics with the characteristic Pinot Noir flavours of black cherry and stone fruit. The old vine fruit contributes the length of flavour and great complexity. Roty’s Charmes Chambertin Cuvée Trѐs Vieilles Vignes is largely harvested from vines of over 120 years.
One of the great domaines of Gevrey. Pierre-Jean has taken up the reins and seems to intent on following the families somewhat idiosyncratic, uncompromising path. “Nothing changes” as Madame Roty told us on our last visit. These are not fashion- conscious wines, everything is destemmed, new oak is relatively high, around 50% on the village wines, 60-70% on the Lieux-Dit and 100% on the Grand Cru. They are wines made to age, there is little point opening them young.
Roty developed his own custom heat exchanger to cool the tanks and delay the onset of fermentation for a week or more, which enabled him to minimize sulfur additions to the vats. His use of wooden cuvées for fermentation (the tops are closed once the tanks are filled), which take a while to heat up, also helped him draw out the pre-fermentation cold soak. (Extended cold maceration clearly brings deeper color, which some other producers try to achieve through very warm fermentation temperatures.) Roty began working with wild yeasts in 1985, and the wines here have been fermented entirely with indigenous yeasts since the harvest of 1987.
Philippe and now Pierre-Jean adopted their father’s practices with very few significant adjustments; in my tastings with them over the past nearly 20 years, both made it clear to me that they were not interested in making any substantial changes to their father’s methods.
Pierre-Jean continues to add very little sulfur during the juice stage, although he now uses a more modern and effective heat exchanger to cool the grapes and delay the onset of the fermentation. He continues to take advantage of batonnage, depending on the needs of each vintage. But after several years of experimenting with stainless steel tanks with his brother Philippe, Pierre-Jean no longer vinifies in wooden vats. The Rotys modernized their vat room in 2014 and now use only stainless steel and a few concrete tanks. (But note that all of the vintages in my recent tasting were vinified in wooden vats.)
