Wine Advocate (94-96)

The 2013 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru has an inviting, warm and enveloping bouquet that seems to surround the senses and give them a big hug. The palate is well balanced with fine tannins, animated citrus fruit underlying the black cherries and wild strawberry notes. There is really quite wonderful precision and focus on the finish. This is one of Jadot's best 2013s.

Wine Advocate (93-95)

The 2016 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru was showing a little more reduction on the nose compared to the Clos Saint-Denis, although I felt that there is more detail and complexity in situ. The palate is very refined with filigree tannin, great tension and focus, a gentle grip in the mouth with an almost tart, tensile finish that lingers in the mouth. I also appreciate the spiciness on the aftertaste. Superb.

Wine Advocate (91-93)

The 2016 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru was picked on 28 September, includes 30% whole bunch fruit and matured in 40% new oak. It has a clean, fresh and vibrant bouquet with red cherry, cranberry leaf and fine mineralité coming through with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with crisp tannin, impressive depth, quite saline in the mouth with a pinch of spice/black pepper toward the finish. This is a well-crafted Clos de la Roche that should age with style.

Vinous (92-94)

The 2018 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru has a gorgeous bouquet of dark berry fruit, crushed stone and touches of truffle and iodine. It just bursts from the glass. The palate is very ripe and sweet on the entry, displaying a lot of sucrosity and a very vibrant finish laden with cola-tinged black fruit. It might just be a little too much for my palate, although I suspect it will be very seductive.

Vinous (96-98)

The 2020 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru has a powerful yet beguiling, elegant bouquet that offers layers of red cherry and blackberry fruit, the oak here seamless integrated, likewise the whole bunch. The palate is medium-bodied with supple, saturated tannins, the fleshy/puppy fat almost disguising the backbone present here. Very persistent on the finish, this is an excellent, luxurious and yet sophisticated Clos de la Roche.

Wine Advocate (94+)

Dujac's 2017 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru is more reserved that the Clos Saint-Denis, unwinding in the glass with scents of red berries, plums, orange rind, cinnamon, peonies and sweet soil tones. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, serious and layered, with muscular structure, lively acids and a long, perfumed finish. While this remains a comparatively accessible, finesse-driven Clos de la Roche, at least a decade's patience will be required to see this begin to realize its potential.

Vinous (97-99)

The 2019 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru has a tightly wound bouquet with beautifully defined red fruit laced with Earl Grey, autumn leaves and a touch of white pepper. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannins, demonstrating a little more girth and depth than the Clos Saint-Denis. It gently builds to a spicy and tensile finish, lingering peppery notes ensuring that you will not forget it in a hurry. Every vine that contributed fruit to this wine deserves a big shiny medal.

Jasper Morris Inside Burgundy (96-98)

(5-Star Wine) Fractionally denser in colour than Clos St-Denis with a meatier bouquet, some blood orange as well as the traditional blueberry of this vineyard. A little white pepper comes up. This is brilliantly complete, no feeling of a lighter vintage, with superb grace at the finish. Ripe alpine strawberries. 76% whole bunches. Drink from 2030-2038.

Burghound (92-95)

Earthy red berry fruit aromas trimmed in a discreet touch of wood spice are laced with earth, forest floor and violet hints. The full-bodied and tautly muscled broad-shouldered flavors possess excellent power and detail on the stunningly long, mildly rustic and youthfully austere finish. This is quite serious and clearly very structured yet it stops short of being overtly old school in style; that said, this will not be an early drinker.

Clos de la Roche is the most northerly of Morey-Saint-Denis' four Grand Cru vineyards. Clos de la Roche is considered one of Morey-Saint-Denis' very best vineyards, and makes full, structured wines with characteristics of cherry and truffle. The vineyard lies on Morey-Saint-Denis' border with Gevrey-Chambertin. The terroir in Clos de la Roche is based largely on limestone. The ‘roche’ (rock) in the name goes back to pre-history, and is reputed to have been used by local druids in their rituals. The Clos de la Roche vineyard was awarded Grand Cru status in December 1936. Domaine Faiveley was established in 1825 in Nuits Saint Georges. The domaine has become one of the best producers in the Côte d'Or and their Clos de la Roche Grand Cru is one of the jewels in their crown. This is excellent superb value for this vineyard in a year like 2018.

Vinous (93+)

The darkest color to this point among these 2015s: bright medium red. Alluring, vibrant perfume of raspberry, dark cherry and rose petal. Sappy and extract-rich, with its deep, slightly medicinal flavors of blueberry, dark raspberry and tart red cherry enlivened by elements of saline minerality and crushed rock. This very concentrated but youthfully backward wine finishes with outstanding length; compared to the Clos Saint-Denis, it's a bit less refined but more powerful This may age longer owing to the richness of its tannins but it's also quite showy today.

Jancis Robinson (18)

Cask sample. Meaty, orange-peel nose with lots of edge and energy. Like essence of Morey. Really exciting but with a flourish rather than concentration. Great balance and refinement as well as depth. So well done! Oddly appealing already but certainly not simple.

Vinous (92+)

(30% new oak, or roughly the same percentage as all of the 2015 crus here): Bright dark red. Very sexy, subtly complex scents of dark raspberry, black cherry, licorice, coffee and mocha, with suggestions of liqueur-like ripeness. Densely packed and thick, with subtle sweetness supported by ripe acidity. Quite juicy and savory in the mouth, then firmly tannic but not dry on the very long, rising back end. The yield here was a normal 42 hectoliters per hectare. This wine struck me as a bit New World in character when I first tasted it from barrel, but today it's clearly communicating its Morey terroir. (Lignier did not open a bottle of his Clos Saint-Denis, as he has just 140 bottles--plus another 140 for the owner of the vineyard.)

Vinous (94-96)

The 2019 Clos de La Roche Grand Cru contains 80% whole bunches this year and underwent just a couple of punch-downs. There is a tiny amount of reduction on the nose as I taste it, gradually opening to reveal raspberry, blackcurrant and violet aromas. The palate is medium-bodied with saturated tannins matched with a very fine bead of acidity. This is a very cohesive and refined Grand Cru with a lilting, carefree finish that belies its inherent complexity and persistent. Easy to under-estimate this, I am sure it will age with style.

Wine Advocate (96)

This was a superb showing for the 2007 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru Cuvée Vieilles Vignes, a brilliant wine that bursts from the glass with a complex and maturing bouquet of red cherries, caramelized orange rind, cinnamon, potpourri and sweet soil tones. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, textural and satiny, with a concentrated, layered core, tangy acids and a stunningly long, sapid finish. This has always been a brilliant wine that transcends the vintage, but new dimensions are becoming apparent as it enters its second decade. This was the last vintage bottled under natural cork chez Ponsot.

Wine Advocate (97)

The 2016 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru Cuvée Vieilles Vignes is superb, bursting from the glass with aromas of juicy cherries, peonies, blood orange, licorice, raw cocoa and espresso roast. On the palate, it's full-bodied, deep and succulent, with a concentrated, layered mid-palate, satiny structuring tannins and vibrant underlying acidity, concluding with a long finish. Harvested on October 7 at a comparatively high yield by Ponsot's standards of 38 hectoliters per hectare, this year seems to have been perfectly adapted to Ponsot's style. Vibrant, elegant and expressive, the 2016 is quite different from the richer, more powerful 2015, but in the fullness of time, I wouldn't be surprised to see it surpassing its brawnier elder sibling.

Burghound (97)

A brooding and almost grumpy nose only grudgingly gives up its aromas of poached plum, warm earth, smoked game and once again, plenty of spice nuances. The velvety and opulent big-bodied flavors brim with an abundance of dry extract that imparts a seductive mid-palate mouth but also serves to buffer the remarkably firm tannic spine shaping the powerful and hugely long finish where the only nit is a suggestion of warmth. This is a fantastic but seriously imposing wine with the structure to match so this is one to buy and forget you own it. In a word, brilliant.

Burghound (97)

A brooding and almost grumpy nose only grudgingly gives up its aromas of poached plum, warm earth, smoked game and once again, plenty of spice nuances. The velvety and opulent big-bodied flavors brim with an abundance of dry extract that imparts a seductive mid-palate mouth but also serves to buffer the remarkably firm tannic spine shaping the powerful and hugely long finish where the only nit is a suggestion of warmth. This is a fantastic but seriously imposing wine with the structure to match so this is one to buy and forget you own it. In a word, brilliant.

Wine Advocate (98)

The single-vineyard Sorte O Soro had not been produced since 2016, and the 2019 Sorte O Soro is the next vintage after that. This plot has always shown additional elegance, freshness and salinity since he started vinifying it in 2004, because of the altitude (710 meters above sea level) and the north exposure to the Bibei Valley, where the old clone is planted on fine granite sand and quartz soils. Like As Sortes, this Sorte also fermented and matured with lees in new 500-liter French oak barrels for eight months. It has 14% alcohol with a pH of 3.12 and higher acidity (at 7.5 grams) than the rest of the 2019s. It feels very harmonious, elegant and nuanced with some creaminess, with notes of wet pollen and yellow flowers. The palate reflects the soil, with vibrant granite and very fine sand and electric quartz (saline), and it's also round and powerful from the clone that is planted in the vineyard. This vineyard is in the process of being organically and biodynamically certified. 2,240 bottles were filled in September 2020. I tasted the 2019s and 2020s from Rafa Palacios in Valdeorras. For him, these are two very good years. 2019 had a mild and dry winter and a rainy and cold spring that delayed budding, followed by a mild summer with fewer hours of sunshine, which meant a delay in the ripening process. Harvest was more than one month later than usual, and the grapes achieved very slow ripening and full development of aromas and flavors while keeping the acidity. The harvest started in October and finished in November. It's a beautiful, homogeneous vintage with very good wines. 2020 saw a moderately cool and rainy winter and a dry and cold spring that resulted in 20% less bunches than in 2019. The summer was also quite dry but, fortunately, not too hot. Given the low yields, maturation was accelerated, and the harvest began at the beginning of September for Louro and from September 25th for As Sortes. Given the scarce water, the plants had to work harder deep down into the soil, which marked the wines; the silica and quartz from the sandy soils of O Bolo shaped a saline identity and the wines achieved a lot of elegance and balance. It's a more heterogeneous vintage, and the higher-altitude vineyards behaved better. The 2020 O Soro is out of this world. He gave me a quick preview of the very cold 2021, a vin de garde vintage but a challenging year with a lot of rain. They are in the process of certifying their vineyards (organic and biodynamic), but they have some problems in the vineyards with neighbors who are not organic, so it will probably be faster for O Soro and Sorte Antiga.

Decanter (98)

Sampled from a vat, this is one of the best As Sortes I have ever tasted, comparable to the iconic 2011. It's a prodigy of subtleness and elegance. Everything is firmly delicate in this wine. Restrained aromas open up parsimoniously, with a steely structure like a great Burgundy, but with flinty acidity almost like Grosses Gewächs from Rheingau. Despite the fact that the sample was not yet bottled, the wine had no oak influence, just the indication that it had been aged, as top Godello must. Rafael Palacios is refining his work year after year, reaching the magic of the greatest wines. A top wine, and one to keep.

Wine Advocate (95)

The 2015 O Diviso felt closed, more reticent, and seems more powerful, despite the fact they did a nonextractive vinification; they did nothing and let the wine ferment at its own pace. This matured in one 600-liter oak barrel, and this is the only red that has a slight note from the oak. There is also a relevant amount of Garnacha Tintorera, so the combination of a warm year, the small barrel and the varietal mix resulted in a more austere and backward wine that is going to require more time in bottle. The fruit is darker and the wine is more powerful than the 2014. It might evolve with time in bottle, because it certainly has the stuffing to do so, but today As Caborcas was singing, and I have to give it the edge. 895 bottles produced. It was bottled in May 2016.