Wine Advisor
Domaine Faiveley, Batard Montrachet Grand Cru 2010
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Stephen Tanzer
Bright yellow. Deep aromas of pineapple, exotic herbs, clove oil and smoky oak, complicated by a leesy element. Large-scaled, glyceral and broad; less precise today than the Bienvenue but that's due to this wine's major baby fat. Very ripe peach and apricot flavors are lifted by lemon oil and chewy saline minerality. Finishes very long, with a light dusting of tongue-coating tannins. This wine held up well for days in the recorked bottle. I would not be surprised to see it merit an even higher score with seven or eight years in the cellar.
About the Producer
Domaine Faiveley has a reputation in Burgundy that is as famous as it is. This is because it has more than 130 hectares of vineyards on a very small piece of land, almost all of them in the famous Cote d'Or and Cote Chalonnaise. Three quarters of the 50 hectares of the Côte d'Or vineyards are classified as Grand Cru or Premier Cru. More than 85% of the wines produced by Château Favillet come from its own vineyards. This strength is the result of six generations of tireless work by the Favillet family. Founded in 1852 by the Faiveley family, Château Faiveley is now run by Francois Faiveley. François invested heavily in hiring experts to analyse the soil quality of the vineyards and then apply relevant organic fertilisers to adjust the soil composition. He uses a number of methods to control yields, such as removing excess buds and retaining older vines. When it comes to harvesting the grapes, the traditional hand-picking method is used. This method is quite time consuming, but it is the only way to ensure the quality of the grapes. In Burgundy, it takes the average winemaker around a week to complete the harvesting process. Only an extravagant winemaker such as Favelle would go to the trouble of employing a team of 400 pickers to complete the harvest in a day or two. At the winery, the grapes are then carefully hand-selected before they can go through the fermentation process on the skins. After pressing, all the Favelle wines from the Grand Cru or Grand Cru vineyards are aged in new oak barrels and bottled unfiltered, in their original state, to reveal the complexity of the wine's personality. In addition to the strict control of the winemaking process, the Favelle range is constantly seeking to diversify its product range. Having acquired a large number of Nuits-St-Georges Grand Cru wines, François relied on his contacts to exchange vineyards with friends in order to diversify the range. He swapped red wines from the Beaune appellation and white wines from Aligote in the Cote Chalonnaise appellation, thus enriching the range of appellations and products he owned. Robert Parker once said of Château Favillé: "The only Burgundian winemakers today who can surpass Favillé in quality are probably Château Romanée-Conti (DRC) and Domaine Leroy! "
