The 2012 Beaune 1er Cru Les Chouacheux comes from the domaine’s single-hectare parcel of 53-year-old vines located on brown limestone soils. It has a lifted, rustic but well-defined bouquet laden with brambly red berry fruit, hints of bay leaf and mint. The palate is medium-bodied with grippy and slightly chalky tannins on the entry. It feels firm and masculine in the mouth with a tannic, dark berry finish that needs to develop a little more charm by the time of bottling.
Domaine Coste-Caumartin is steeped in history and feels like part of the fabric of the village. Its roots can be traced back to the “Fiefdom of Montjeu” that lay on this site during medieval times. The buildings themselves date from 1610 and in the middle of the courtyard lies a well that is dated 1641, still with a small trench from which horses once slaked their thirst. The Coste family bought the estate in 1793 and were involved in the iron trade and it subsequently passed down through the maternal side of the family. In 1988 it came into the hands of Jerome Sordet, who had been running a successful timber business. Up until that time, the fruit had been sold off, but he began bottling the wines and expanded the holdings from 9 to 12 hectares, as well as increasing the winery size. It is now equipped with concrete fermenting vats and stainless steel. Here the grapes are de-stemmed and undergo daily pigeage and remontage, the wines usually matured in 10% to 20% new oak barrels. It was a pleasure to meet Jerome and he is clearly passionate about his wines. I liked him enormously. However, I must be honest and say that the wines did not match up to my expectations. They came across as old-fashioned and rustic, plagued by hard finishes that cried out for more freshness, delineation and most importantly, charm. I looked for positives as much as I could, conducting mini-verticals of their two most prestigious premier crus to see if age countenanced these wines. For sure, these more mature bottles offered some evidence that 2012 had not particularly favored Pommard. But the infectious self-belief expressed by Jerome, the weight of history that is suffused into this domaine, is perhaps obscuring some of the fundamentals that need to be addressed. To this end, I suspect that these wines might have been probably cropped too high and that the fruit needs more selection and careful handling. They have the vines to make very fine wines and I hope that will be realized in the future.
Importer: United Estates Wine Imports. www.unitedestateswines.com
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