Domaine Nicolas Faure Aloxe-Corton 2018 750ml

Julia Harding MW scored this 2018 16.5/20 in November 2019 and caught a hint of lavender she put down to the stems; every Faure red is fermented whole-bunch.

Faure's Aloxe-Corton comes from 0.12 hectares in two climats, Les Valozières and Les Caillettes, rented under a fermage lease and planted with vines of around sixty years, as Nouvelles Sélections, his Japanese importer, records. Harding's note on the 2018 adds the split: half Valozières on clay-limestone, half Caillettes on finer, sandy ground. Nouvelles Sélections gives the élevage as twelve months in casks Denis Berthaut had already used several times, after fermentation in stainless steel; Veritas Wines, which handles the wine abroad, gives sixteen months in five-year-old barrels. Wine Uki, the Japanese retailer that sold the 2018, calls it the fourth release of the cuvée and puts the year's output at around 900 bottles.

2018 followed one of the wettest winters on record in Burgundy, close to twenty inches of rain between late 2017 and March, and Goedhuis Waddesdon's vintage report credits that reserve of water with carrying the vines through a hot, dry July and August without hydric stress. Flowering came early and evenly in mid-May, nights stayed cooler than in 2003, and picking ran from the end of August into early September. The same report finds the best reds denser than earlier vintages of the decade, with alcohol held in check and tannins that are fine rather than scarce. iDealwine lists this bottle at 13.5 percent.

Faure grew up in Blaye, in a Bordeaux wine-trade household, studied in Beaune from 2004, spent a year each with Agnès Paquet and Jean-Louis Chave, and worked the vineyards of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from May 2010 to March 2015 while making his first wine from leased vines in Nuits-Saint-Georges. Prieuré Roch followed, then from July 2017 the vineyard manager's post at Berthaut-Gerbet. His own 1.12 hectares at Meuilley are horse-ploughed, farmed without chemical fertiliser, herbicide or insecticide, and bottled without fining or filtration.

In the glass

Harding, writing for JancisRobinson.com in November 2019 (as quoted by K&L Wine Merchants), found the 2018 darker and less immediately open than Faure's Les Herbues: lightly peppery, dark-fruited yet fragrant, with no obvious stemmy character, and a chalkier, firmer, denser finish. Faure told her the tannins read dry because the wine had only just been bottled, and she allowed for that in her 16.5/20.

When to open

iDealwine lists a service temperature of 16°C. Our suggestion: Goedhuis Waddesdon expects the 2018 reds to please young and then close for a spell; eight years on, decant for an hour and drink over the coming decade.

At the table

Our suggestion: pigeon roasted pink, or a slice of jambon persillé before the main course.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from the Japanese importer.

Sources: Nouvelles Sélections (Japanese importer); producer label; Wine Uki; Katsuda; iDealwine; JancisRobinson.com (J. Harding MW, via K&L Wine Merchants); Goedhuis Waddesdon 2018 vintage report; Veritas Wines; Daikanyama Wine Salon