Dom. Denis Mortet
Lavaux Saint Jacques Premier Cru
Gevrey Chambertin
2009

The producer

Acknowledged as one of the finest winemakers on the Cote d’Or, Arnaud Mortet assumed the enormous mantle developed by his father Denis who died in 2006 at the early age of 51. Denis Mortet had been making outstanding wines since the mid-1990s through vineyard management and winemaking inspired by Henri Jayer and Leroy. Their holdings are mainly in Gevrey with wonderful (though expensive) Chambertin Grand Cru and Bonnes Mares but also an excellent Lavaux-Saint-Jacques and some evolving stars in their Les Champeaux. They are also well represented in Chambolle, Vosne and Vougeot.

Arnaud commenced at the estate in 1999 and continued, even accelerated hid his father’s work in fine tuning the winemaking by reducing extraction by gentler maceration and the level of new oak to take the wines to an even greater level of intensity combined with elegance and finesse. Work in the vineyards has returned to sustainable practices including ploughing by horse and elimination of any machinery.

The results are wines of seductive fragrance and texture - from simple Bourgogne through to the exemplary Chambertin - result from impeccable work in the vineyards and very low yields combined with ever-inquiring winemaking. The estate Denis Mortet is acclaimed by critics and fellow winemakers alike.

The wine

Mortet is one of the largest owners in Lavaux Saint-Jacques with 1.16 hectares of 60 plus year old south-facing vines. The vineyard is one of the cooler Gevrey sites due to it being nestled towards the Combe de Lavaux and thus the fresh air draining into the valley at night. The fermentation includes varying degrees of whole cluster fruit, although often around 50%, and is followed by ageing for around 18 months in oak barrel, 70% of which are new. Always a finely structured and elegant wine, Lavaux-St-Jacques is fresher and more elegant than Mortet’s Champeaux premier cru.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.