Wine Advisor
Domaine Faiveley, Batard Montrachet Grand Cru 2020
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: William Kelley
The 2020 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru unfurls in the glass with aromas of ripe orchard fruit, hazelnuts, freshly baked bread, baking spices and buttered toast. Full-bodied, ample and fleshy, it's generous and giving, with lively acids and plenty of mid-palate weight. As I've written before about this cuvée, if it can pick up some additional tension during a second winter on the lees, my score will seem conservative.
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
The 2020 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru has a very well-defined, quite mineral-driven bouquet with touches of white chocolate and even a hint of marron glacées percolating through the citrus fruit. The palate is extremely well balanced, but tight and focused, good depth, quite creamy towards the finish. Very difficult not to swallow this now, but it will age very well in bottle. Excellent.
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! "
