Berthaut Gerbet Bourgogne Hautes Cotes de Nuits Rouge 2018

100% Pinot Noir. Amélie Berthaut is one of our favorite new producers, not only in Burgundy, but the whole world! Amélie has received an impressive array of vineyards from her mother and father who owned and managed separate family domaines. The newly-baptized Domaine Berthaut-Gerbet includes all the vineyards of Domaine Denis Berthaut and parts of the vineyards of Domaine François Gerbet, totaling 16 hectares located in the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits, in the villages of Fixin, Gevrey-Chambertin, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, and Vosne-Romanée. There are small plots of wine collector catnip in Cazetiers, Lavaut, and Petits-Monts, but the heart of the domaine, physically and emotionally, is in Fixin. It was Amélie’s Fixins that most piqued our interest when we first heard about her. Why? Because with all due respect, a really good Vosne or Gevrey, great examples of those are not uncommon, whereas great examples of Fixin were thought to be extinct. Like all great winemakers, Amélie insists that the most important work happens in the vineyards and working the soil. She follows lutte raisonnée farming, with a strong leaning towards organic viticulture: no herbicides or pesticides in the vineyards. In the cellar, the juice goes through a cold maceration for up to five days. Indigenous yeasts start fermentations naturally – alcoholic fermentation in concrete and malolactic in barrels or foudres. She uses a combination of or foudres (1500-3000 liters) and barrels for aging and will age the wines for up to 24 months and total sulfur is 30-50ppm. All of these changes has lead to heaping amounts of praise. William Kelley of the Wine Advocate wrote, "In short, all the stars are aligned at this address, and readers shouldn't hesitate to seek out the wines." Neal Martin of Vinous wrote, "Amélie Berthaut is single-handedly showing what the overlooked appellation of Fixin can achieve...it is the wines from Fixin that really form the core of the range, and they come highly recommended. It is heartening to see how Amélie Berthaut instigated changes at the domaine and now, five or six years down the line, seems to have settled in...She lets the wines speak for themselves and, as I have written before, we await more Fixin-based winemakers to follow her lead and give this appellation a higher profile." Everything at Berthaut-Gerbet now points to the hatching of a Grand Domaine. It will be gradual, thought-out, and real.