I don’t want to rush you, but if you would like to add this showpiece Grand Cru magnum to your collection, you’ll have to act quickly, because we have precious few to share. If we could have gotten more, we certainly would have, because Esmonin’s Ruchottes-Chambertin is the total package: great vineyard, great vintage, and a remarkable value.
Having offered this wine previously in 750ml format (and having done a few bottles’ worth of due diligence on my end), I can assure you the magnum promises to be lightning in a bottle. Esmonin has been a perennial performer here on SommSelect, delivering some of the very best quality-to-price ratios in Burgundy, and by now I’d think all but our newest subscribers know what a superlative vintage I consider 2014 to be. The ’14 whites received more press hype, but I’ve been keener on the reds, which have tended to be overlooked because of the hedonistic, early-drinking 2015s that followed them. I like ’14s because they’re more classically structured, built for long aging in the cellar. And as I noted previously, this wine is not exactly “cheap”—unless, of course, you peruse what other producers charge for their Ruchottes-Chambertin bottlings, at which point Esmonin’s seems like a steal. And it is: This is a polished and profound expression of this tiny Grand Cru vineyard, and the rarity of the wines from this
cru only amplifies the value offered by this one. All that said, just one magnum per customer until our stock runs out—sorry!
Domaine Frédéric Esmonin’s parcel of Ruchottes-Chambertin sits directly below the one owned by Domaine Armand Rousseau, one of Burgundy’s most hallowed properties. Regardless of who’s selling it, a wine from Ruchottes-Chambertin is, by definition, extremely rare—the entire vineyard spans just 3.25 hectares, with multiple properties bottling wines from it (including other heavy hitters like Roumier and Mugneret-Gibourg). Yet despite charging much less than most of their contemporaries, Esmonin delivers on the quality front: This is luscious, aromatically complex, top-flight red Burgundy in every way.
Located in Gevrey-Chambertin and focused almost entirely on wines from that village, the Esmonin family has only been ‘domaine-bottling’ its own wines since 1991. Previously, André Esmonin sold grapes (and wine) to some of Burgundy’s most respected négociants, including Jadot and Leroy. André continues to assist his son, Frédéric, at this tiny property, whose vineyard holdings total just four hectares—albeit four well-positioned hectares, which include pieces of the Grand Crus Ruchottes- and Mazy-Chambertin as well as three Premier Cru sites. Their vines are very old (40+ years in the Grand Crus) and production is, as you might expect, very small: overall, they bottle around a dozen different wines, none of them in significant quantities.
The Esmonins farm sustainably, practicing that most French of approaches known as lutte raisonnée (“the reasoned fight”). Their wines are clean, concentrated, and modern, with a healthy (but not excessive) percentage of new oak used for aging; one distinguishing feature of Esmonin wines is their drinkability in their youth. Even in a more “classic” vintage like 2014, this wine is already approachable, especially after breathing some air.
This 2014 from Esmonin is textbook Grand Cru red Burgundy—a regal red wine, succulent and deeply perfumed in a way that few other reds of the world can match. In the glass, it is a deep ruby with hints of magenta at the rim, with aromas of red and black cherry, blackberry, black tea, forest floor, and some oak-derived notes of baking spices. Lush and nearly full-bodied on the palate, its tannins are firmer than those of the 2015, but it is by no means shut down or unapproachable—just likely to be significantly better with time in the bottle. You could certainly enjoy a bottle tonight—decant it about 60 minutes before serving in large Burgundy stems at 60-65 degrees—but I think this wine’s best self will be revealed a few more years down the line, say 2022-2025. I’m going to keep it classic here and recommend one of my standbys—
boeuf bourguignon—because, quite frankly, that never gets old. Cheers!
