Faiveley Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru 2022

This structured and 'aristocratic' red wine originates from France, within the prestigious Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru A.O.C. appellation of Burgundy's Côte de Nuits. Domaine Faiveley, one of Burgundy's most legendary and historic family-owned estates founded in 1825, holds three choice parcels within this famous 50-hectare walled Grand Cru enclosure. Totaling over 1.2 hectares, Faiveley’s plots are situated in the upper and mid-slopes of the Clos resting on deep limestone beds mixed with gravelly, iron-rich clay and marl. This prized position ensures excellent drainage and optimal sun exposure, allowing Pinot Noir to achieve intense phenolic maturity, deep structural density, and remarkable age-worthy power.

Wine Description

The 2022 Domaine Faiveley Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru presents a deep, luminous garnet-ruby color in the glass with bright violet shimmers at the rim. Its sensory profile is exceptionally bold, high-toned, and complex, delivering a textbook expression of Grand Cru Côte de Nuits muscle and refinement with the generous, solar touch of the 2022 vintage. The bouquet opens with a captivating, multi-layered display of wild black cherries, dark forest berries, and ripe red plums, seamlessly integrated with complex underlays of dried violets, sweet pipe tobacco, damp earth, truffle, crushed limestone, and a subtle touch of toasted French cedarwood. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, muscular, and precisely focused, showcasing a succulent, mouth-coating core of dark stone fruits, blood orange peel, and dark cocoa. It is characterized by its outstanding inner energy and an incisive, mouthwatering backbone of natural acidity that drives a vertical, deep development. The mouthfeel is broad, athletic, and linear, framed by firm, fine-grained, and chalky tannins that carry into an extraordinarily long, dry, and savory finish accented by persistent notes of iron, spices, and forest floor.

This high-definition Burgundian expression is 100% Pinot Noir, harvested meticulously by hand at peak physiological maturity. Following rigorous double sorting at the winery, the fruit was partially destemmed and underwent cold pre-fermentation maceration in custom wooden vats. Alcoholic fermentation took place with native yeasts, utilizing gentle daily punch-downs (pigeage) to extract fine phenolics and deep color without harsh extraction. To polish its formidable structural tannins while respecting pure Grand Cru elegance, the wine completed malolactic conversion and was matured for 16 to 18 months in French oak barriques (around 50% to 60% new wood selected from top coopers). It reaches an effortlessly balanced alcohol content (ABV) of 13.5% to 14.0% and is finished bone-dry.

Vintage Quality

The 2022 vintage across Burgundy is celebrated as a stellar, rich, and beautifully balanced growing season characterized by abundant sunshine and warm summer conditions. High daytime temperatures enabled Pinot Noir to achieve ideal sugar development and deep skin phenolics, while cool nights and timely late-summer rains preserved crucial natural acidity and energetic aromatic precursors. Domaine Faiveley harvested healthy, perfectly ripe fruit with excellent skin-to-juice ratios. The resulting 2022 Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru combines plush solar richness and velvety mid-palate density with noble structural grip, built to evolve and improve in a cellar over the next 15 to 25+ years.