NEAL ROSENTHAL'S "MOST UNDERRATED" BURGUNDY PRODUCER
Last year at a lunch with Neal Rosenthal, one of America's finest boutique farmhouse wine importers, we had the pleasure of enjoying a magnum of 1983 Domaine Rollin Corton-Charlemagne. The bottle was extraordinary and exhibited a poised balance of honeyed orchard fruits laced with umami and earl grey tea. I asked Neal who the most underrated producer was in his portfolio, who are we missing? His response, "you're drinking it right now." Rollin is one of the staple Burgundy producers of the Neal Rosenthal import portfolio, and each year a tiny amountof these tremendous Burgundies priced like its yesteryear are released into the states.
Rollin is one of the benchmark producers in Pernand-Vergelesses, a tiny village tucked away under the Grand Cru hill of Corton. Beneath Corton’s majesty, the village has a cooler microclimate whose virtues truly show best in warmer vintages like 2018 and 2019. These wines exhibit the increased weight inherent to the vintage, but possess that streak of acidity and minerality that makes Rollin’s wines some of the most reliable values in Burgundy. They're classic Burgundies that aren't marred by oak or overextraction, and the pricing approaches Tuesday night Burgundy level. I encourage all levels of Burgundy lover to explore these wines, as they usually come in as one of our favorite values each year. - BK
Like its companion village white, this wine is a standard bearer for the Rollin domaine, making a statement about the charm and tenacity of the best wines of this region. The grapes are sourced from several plots, the two most important of which are in the “Les Pins”(on the northern side of the village) and “Les Noirets” (on the southern side of the village) vineyards. Most of the vines are old and the resulting wine has significant backbone but, like the truest wines of Pernand, the color is more often ruby-garnet rather than a deep red. Approximately 1800 bottles are allocated annually for our use in the USA.
