My Store: New Jersey (change store) 888-686-6673
Santenots is a Premier Cru which, while actually located in Meursault, is sold as Volnay. This is one old Burgundy that won’t fade in a carafe, so don’t hesitate to decant it, and be sure to use a good glass. The wine has a youthful, saturated, deep ruby color, with flashes of bright mahogany at the edge. The nose is endlessly complex, and hard to pin down, with ripe red currants, strawberry preserves, freshly cut hay, and crushed sweet herbs moving in and out of the foreground as the wine evolves in the glass. On the palate, the flavors echo the nose: sweet and pure on entry, with a warm, concentrated core that grows more and more voluminous with time, yet remains wonderfully firm, fresh and vibrant. This is perfectly mature wine, shipped under perfect temperature-controlled conditions.
About this wine producer: Clive Coates, MW, writing of his first visit to Domaine Ampeau in 1986, called Robert Ampeau “a French vigneron determined to live up to the archetype: surly, suspicious, chauvinistic, doing his best to make us feel uncomfortable, to make us realize we were wasting his time.” But we’d heard from better sources, stories of the five incredible cellars under the rue du Cromin, and that Robert’s son Michel was funny and smart. So I couldn’t resist asking if we’d be welcome when we were in Burgundy in 1991. And I needn’t have worried; we found Robert Ampeau to be as good-natured and generous as I’d heard he was ornery and cold. Our 1991 visit, it turned out, was only the first of many. And for us it was an epiphany. What we’d heard about Robert and Michel Ampeau “holding back wine until it was ready to drink” wasn’t the whole story at all. They simply didn’t care as much about whether or not anyone bought them, as they cared about the weather, and the vines, and their annual struggle with nature to produce them.
$185.00