Cuvée du Tonnelier

Cuvee du Tonnelier

• From our oldest vines, planted in 1990.
• Blend of the Pommard Clone (UCD 4).
• Lends itself to earlier drinking.

The name, roughly translated as “the barrel maker’s cuvée,” honors the legacy of the winemaker’s father whose family were “tonneliers” or coopers in 17th century France. The wine is blended from the oldest vines on the farm; the ten acre block of Pommard clones just south of the brick house planted in 1990.

2012 “Cuvée du Tonnelier” Pinot Noir
Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, 95 points

“Very pure in color, it has a generous, floral bouquet with quite precocious scents of redcurrant and cranberry fruit, rose petals and a puff of chalk dust. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannin. The acidity is very well judged with touches of marmalade infusing the pure red fruit with fig developing toward the refined finish. Gorgeous.”

Typically this cuvée offers cinnamon, allspice and earthy notes of forest floor and bramble. In some years the Cuvée du Tonnelier includes significant whole cluster fermented fruit, contributing powerful structure with supple fruit. Like all our Pinot Noir bottling, the Cuvée typically benefits from four to eight years in the cellar but it is often the first of our reserve Pinot Noirs to be generously approachable.