Maison Ambroise, Bourgogne Rouge, Côte d'Or 2022

The Côte D'Or Appellation was created relatively recently to allow producers to show their interpretation of the Burgundy heartland by blending grapes from all over the region. Smaller producers, such as the Ambroise family, have a limited amount of land with which to work, so this appellation is actually really interesting as you get a blend of grapes that in reality only come from their back garden and some younger vines in Nuits Saint Georges. This is a cracking wine!

Bucket-loads of ripe red and blackberry fruits with notes of culinary spices and a delicious acidic nerve throughout the palate make this a serious contender for an alternative to village-level Burgundy. It is mouth-wateringly delicious, yet lacks absolutely nothing in terms of concentration and complexity.

This is a wine that is made from vineyards in the south of the Nuits Saint Georges appellation and from those in the Ambroise homestead at Premeaux-Prissey. Vines with an average age of 50 years are grown on clay, limestone and chalk -based soils. Hand harvested grapes are de-stemmed and fermented in vats before ageing in a combination of barrel types (20% new and 80% fairly inert and passive) for 12 months or so. 

Maison Ambroise are a family run winery based just to the south of the town of Nuiits Saint George in the hamlet of Premeaux-Prissey (famed, with its neighbour Comblanchien, for incredible marble quarries).

From here they farm on nearly 20 hectares in the immediate vicinity, to the northern part of Nuits Saint Georges and to the south, where they have vines in Corton Grand Cru. 

Now in the fifth generation, the family followed a very common path from municipal farmers of all sorts of food crops, to focussing on wine production more recently. The seriously cool thing about the Ambroise family though, is that they started making wine in the early 1940s - imagine pivoting to a wine business during Nazi occupation - some nerve!

And all their wines are certified organic and their sustainable principles are unwaveringly maintained - sure, why wouldn't they be, when the wines are this good?!