2023 Domaine Taupenot-Merme, Bourgogne Passetoutgrain, Côte de Nuits, Burgundy, France.
I had been a fan of Taupenot-Merme for a while, but had never seen their Aligoté or this Passetoutgrain, so it was exciting to dig into it and I loved this 2023 version, with its deep garnet/ruby color and earthy dark fruit, I was hooked almost immediately by its charms, This Gamay and Pinot blend carries itself well in the glass with an elegant silken medium bodied palate that reveals plum, cherry, strawberry and mulberry fruits, along with briar, dried flowers, garden herb, truffle and subtle mineral notes. There’s a restraint, balance and a raw element that tell you exactly where this intriguing wine comes from, this is purely Burgundy, even with the Gamay in here. This wine was a sublime example of Passetoutgrain that I hope to have again sooner versus later, and it was very flexible with wide range of food choices had on the night, but especially good with a fresh wild mushroom dish. The 50% Gamay Noir and 50% Pinot Noir Bourgogne Passetoutgrain or Passe-Tout-Grain is from grapes sourced at a single lieu-dit Croix “Jeanniard” in Morey-Saint-Denis AOC and saw 100% de-stemming and a natural indigenous yeast fermentation in stainless steel tanks with 8-13 days on the skins. The punchdowns and pump-overs were carefully conducted, by hand, for gentle extraction, all determined by tasting by winemaker Romain Taupenot before the wine is transferred to barrels. The wines, made separate by varietal are aged between 12-15 months in lightly toasted barrels before blending wen the wines are racked to tanks for 3 months before bottling, which is done unfined and rarely, if ever, filtered. These vines are set on classic clay and limestone soils and were planted back in 1986, giving this wine some serious maturity and depth of flavors.
As noted here before, Romain and his sister Virginie Taupenot, of the highly prized Domaine Taupenot-Merme in the village of Morey, are the ninth generation of their family to run the domaine that has some outstanding and historical parcels in mainly the Côte de Nuits, with prime vines in Clos Saint Denis, Chambolle Musigny to the south and Gevrey Chambertin to the north to name a few. The family’s holdings, as importer Kermit Lynch notes, also extend to the Côte de Beaune, centered principally he says around the lovely hilltop village of Saint Romain, plus a special parcel in Corton. Lynch continues, this fabulous, or inspiring collection of top-flight Burgundian vineyards, at Domaine Taupenot-Merme, which a newer addition to his incredible portfolio, was created by the union of the Taupenot family from Saint Romain with the Merme family from Morey Saint Denis in 1963. Romain Taupenot has carried on the house style, which has been described as hauntingly elegant and gently delicate and my own experience with these wines would have me tend to agree and especially with wines such as this pristine and pure Charmes-Chambertin which has a velvety core even with the underlying power of this famed terroir. Reading up, I see that Domaine Taupenot-Merme have close to nine full hectares in the Côte de Nuits side of Burgundy and another 4.5 hectares in the southern zone of Côte de Beaune, so now Romain and Virginie now produce close to 7,000 cases and nineteen different wines, all of which are highly sought after, including this Passetoutgrain. As mentioned, the village wines here at Taupenot-Merme offer a lot of value for the money, as noted above with the Gevrey-Chambertin, as well as the Chambolle-Musigny, but for something extra special the Grand Crus are very tempting.
($35 Est) 92 Points, grapelive