Echezeaux J. Grivot 2010

Domaine Jean Grivot is an estate in the Côte d’Or of Burgundy known for its deep, aromatic Pinot Noir wines with bright red fruit characteristics.

The domaine only makes wines from its own vineyards. Grivot owns around 15 hectares (37 acres) of land across Vosne-Romanée and Nuits-Saint-Georges, including plots in Echézeaux, Richebourg and a sizeable 1.9-ha (4.6-acre) parcel in the legendary Clos de Vougeot vineyard. Everything is planted to Pinot Noir, except for a few rows of Chardonnay, which goes into the Bourgogne Blanc.

All of Grivot’s vineyards are planted to high densities to to encourage competition between the vines, which helps to lower yields. This is further lowered by the use of green harvests, which reduce crop size in favour of quality. The vines are all 40 years or older.

In the winery, the bunches are 95 percent destalked and then undergo four to six days of cold maceration before fermentation in stainless steel. Grivot’s wines are generally matured in oak barrels for 18 months with varying proportions of new oak: around 25 percent for village wines, up to 60 percent for premier cru and as much as 70 percent for grand crus. Wines are bottled without fining or filtration in accordance with lunar movements and atmospheric pressure.

The Grivot family originated from the Jura region and were growing vines as early as the mid 17th Century. Just before the French Revolution, the family moved to Vosne-Romanée. The estate proper was developed in the early 1900s by Gaston Grivot, who sold his lesser plots to buy the Clos de Vougeot parcel in 1919. Domaine Jean Grivot became one of the first Burgundy domaines to bottle and sell its own wines.