2023 Corton Pougets

The 2023 Corton-Pougets Grand Cru (Domaine des Héritiers Jadot) is also an attractive effort, delivering notes of sweet red berries, spices and orange zest followed by a medium to full-bodied, velvety and supple palate that's suave and seamless. This is another cuvée that will offer a broad drinking window.

Chalk and iron-rich marl. Cask sample. Lightish cherry red. Not yet open but with air and agitation there’s a fine aroma of peppery dark-red fruit, with a light herbal note even though there’s no whole bunch here. Fragrant and scented as it opens. Taut, firmly tannic, the structure dominating the fruit at the moment, needing time to mesh and resolve. Chewy, dry, embryonic. Not sure it has quite enough richness on the mid palate for a very long life but my drink dates may well be too conservative.

Taken from a foudre rather than cask, the 2023 Corton-Pougets Grand Cru has an enticing bouquet with wonderfully defined red berry fruit, hints of tobacco and forest floor, delivering the complexity you'd expect from arguably Jadot's strongest red cuvée in the Côte de Beaune. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins. Displaying exquisite balance and poise with plenty of nascent energy and a sustained, lightly spiced finish, this 2023 is up to the task of following the impressive 2022. Superb. As tradition dictates, I undertook a comprehensive tasting of around 100 wines from Louis Jadot at the winery in Beaune, divided into two sessions for the white and red. Readers should note that I interviewed head winemaker Frédéric Barnier. "The wines are 0.5% higher in alcohol in 2023 than 2022, but with exactly the same level of acidity," he adds, after I had filmed the video. "Everything from our own vineyards was around 13.5% while some fruit that we bought was over 14%. Many of the vines resisted excessive sugar accumulation. We introduced foudres so there is less oxygen whilst using the same level of SO2. The challenge was the purity of both the reds and the whites. The fermentation was not so easy for the latter, and we stopped the malolactic a little earlier. There is 0.8gm/L malic acid on 2022 and 1.1gm/L in 2023. There is 0.5% more alcohol but with the same acidity as the 2022."