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Wine Description
The Story
This is produced from vines with an impressive average age of 45 years. The wines tend, according to the vintage, to present heady old vine red and black fruit enriched by toasted oak and refreshed by a lively acidity and minerality.
Château de La Tour, established in 1890, is the largest proprietor of Clos de Vougeot. With six hectares of vines, this covers 12% of the appellation, well sited and housing old and ancient vines, 50 years old on average, with the oldest having been planted in 1910. There are five parcels of vines.
Clos de Vougeot is the largest grand cru in the Côte de Nuits, with over 100 parcels and around eighty owners. There is enormous diversity in terms of terroir – slopes, aspects, altitudes, drainage and underlying geology. Add to that the age of vines, methods of cultivation and winemaking and there is clearly a vast range of styles and qualities produced, all with the Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru label. Château de La Tour owns parcels high up the slope, towards the renaissance manor, in the middle and a little on the lower slope – a true representation of the Clos and a complex palette of ingredients.
Vintage 2002
2002 VINTAGE in Burgundy
A Great Year
The trade is unanimous: the harvest was exceptional and 2002 is destined to be a great vintage for Burgundy. A dry summer, a sunny September, splendid grapes with highly concentrated sugars - everything came together to produce structured and complex wines with outstanding aromatic potential.
As early as the beginning of September, the sugar content in the grapes was often at exceptionally high levels and they had attained a degree of maturity indicative of a good balance between sugar and acidity in both the Chardonnay and the Pinot Noir, as well as in the Gamay and Aligoté.
Well-matured grapes have produced - on the evidence of early tastings - deeply-coloured red wines with a garnet tint, and with really well-structured tannins. Depending on degree of maturity, the wines evoke sustained aromas of red and black fruits. Thanks to yield control and careful harvesting, they present a wide diversity of expression.
The white wines are intense and heady, richly fragrant in their blend of fruit and mineral components. They are rounded, long in the mouth, balanced and harmonious.
Both reds and whites of the 2002 vintage fully express their respective terroirs and promise fine ageing potential.
As Hubert Camus, President of the Interprofession and himself a wine-grower at Gevrey-Chambertin, puts it: "In 2002, Burgundy's growers and négociants have every prospect of obtaining remarkable wines."
Growing conditions during the year were characterised by low rainfall. Maturation took place in warm and sunny weather punctuated by occasional rainstorms. These weather conditions aided concentration in the grapes and kept them healthy. The harvest period enjoyed an ideal combination of sunshine and cool temperatures.