Domaine Parent Corton Grand Cru Les Renardes 2023

This Corton Grand Cru Les Renardes comes from a climat on the eastern flank of the hill of Corton, in the north of the Côte de Beaune, in the village of Aloxe-Corton. Domaine Parent, a family house from Pommard, grows Pinot Noir there on clay-limestone soils renowned for producing broad, deep reds. Partly ploughed by horse, the vines are farmed using biodynamic methods, and the estate has been certified organic since 2013.

The grapes are harvested by hand and then sorted on two tables, one of them vibrating. After destemming, a cold maceration of three to five days precedes a temperature-controlled fermentation, punctuated by gentle punching down and pumping over two to three times a day, for a total maceration period of 18 to 20 days. Ageing lasts 16 to 18 months in French oak barrels, 50% of them new, before bottling at the estate.

This wine reveals notes of blackberry, blackcurrant, black cherry, plum, wild mushroom, forest floor, liquorice, cocoa and sweet spices. The garnet colour, intense and bright, precedes a dense, complex nose. The palate is powerful, fleshy and balanced, with fine, elegant tannins and lovely persistence.

The cradle of wine culture in Western Europe, France owes its first vines to the Greeks of Phocaea, who settled around Marseille some twenty-six centuries ago, before the Romans spread viticulture along the Rhône and the Garonne and as far as Champagne. In the Middle Ages, Cistercian and Benedictine monks cleared the slopes of Burgundy and patiently mapped out the climats, laying the foundations of the notion of terroir. The 19th century brought the glory of the classifications, then the disaster of phylloxera, which wiped out the vineyards before they were rebuilt on American rootstocks; the creation of the appellations d'origine contrôlée in the 1930s then set the rules that would inspire the whole world. Today, France vies every year with Italy and Spain for first place in world production by volume and remains the ultimate benchmark of the Old World, as much for its age-worthy wines as for its winemaking models. Vineyards cover almost the entire country, from the cool north of Champagne and Alsace to the Mediterranean shores of Languedoc and Provence, by way of the oceanic climates of Bordeaux, the Loire and the South-West, continental Burgundy, the steep slopes of the northern Rhône and the high-altitude valleys of Savoie and the Jura. This mosaic of soils – limestone, schist, gravel or rounded pebbles – explains the extraordinary diversity of styles. As for grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate Bordeaux and produce structured reds, Pinot Noir is the signature of Burgundian finesse, Syrah of the depth of the Rhône, while Grenache, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Mourvèdre cover every register, from easy-drinking wines to wines for long ageing. Among the whites, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, Riesling and Viognier offer expressions ranging from lively and mineral to unctuous, all the way to great sweet wines. A land of benchmarks and constant discoveries, France remains the compass for wine lovers the world over.