Meo Camuzet Richebourg Grand Cru 2020 750ml

Burghound.com, Jan 10, 2022
A restrained, elegant and wonderfully fresh nose speaks of a beautiful array of spice and floral elements on the mix of both red and dark fruit, exotic tea and a whiff of oak toast scents. There is excellent energy to the well-detailed and powerful broad-shouldered flavors that brim with sappy dry extract that helps to buffer the markedly firm but not rigid tannic spine shaping the driving, balanced and hugely long finish. This youthfully austere and decidedly backward effort is a classic Richebourg of class and grace but also one that is very much built to repay several decades of keeping.

Domaine Méo-Camuzet is a wine producer located in Vosne-Romanée in the Côte de Nuits. It produces some of the most celebrated wines from the Côte d'Or from a range of grand cru vineyards, including Richebourg, Clos de Vougeot, Corton and Echézeaux. Most of Méo-Camuzet's wines are made from Pinot Noir, and are known for their delicate aromatic concentration.
The founder of the estate was Etienne Camuzet, an early 20th Century politician based in Paris who offered parts of his estate to a variety of sharecroppers to farm. Eventually it came into the hands of Jean-Nicholas Méo in 1986, who realised that the extensive sharecropping meant that only a small portion of vines were under the domaine's control. He set out a long-term strategy to regain the plots from the sharecroppers who were currently working them, with the goal of eventually having estate-grown fruit and bottling under his own label, Méo-Camuzet.
One of these landholders was iconic Burgundy producer Henri Jayer. He had farmed the domaine's land to bottle under his own label for about 40 years. He retired in 1988 and helped to advise Jean-Nicholas on the reacquisition of his vines. Meo-Camuzet now has 14 hectares (35 acres) of vine, including a part of the Cros Parantoux Premier Cru site, which was made famous by Jayer.