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NUITS-SAINT-GEORGES PREMIER CRU
Les Damodes
2018

Technical sheet

The appellation

“The velvety smoothness of good Burgundy wines, caused by the higher spirits, ensures that their taste touches the tongue softly and is gentle on the nerves”, wrote Dr Guy-Crescent Fagon in 1694. He added “A wine that the stomach can press and digest at leisure, without rushing to get rid of it”. This prescription was addressed to Louis XIV, weighed down by ill health. Nuits wine, recommended by his senior physician, soon cured the royal patient. Wine for convalescence, purely medicinal, had been invented!

Les Damodes’s origins, Celtic or Gallo-Roman, are lost in the midst of time. Does this name conjure up a trinity of female deities, similar to the Bonnes Mares? Protectresses of earthly fruit and maternity, these goddesses were worshipped in the region. To the east of Nuits, the Gallo-Roman settlement of Les Bolards covered 15 hectares, and had a very active Mithraic temple. Or perhaps the name evokes druidesses who lived in the coomb. From the Middle Ages, Nuits wine took on a separate identity distinguishing it from Beaune wine. Whereas the Côte de Beaune produced a light-coloured wine (œil-de-perdrix), best drunk young or even primeur, the Côte de Nuits strove to produce a dark velvety-coloured wine, a wine to lay down, deliberately powerful and tannic. It ages well due to its solid qualities, which were highly appreciated in the 17th and 18th centuries at the Court of Versailles, as well as abroad. The German courts were particularly partial to Nuits wine. Nuits wine is renowned for ageing well, whereas Beaune wine is best drunk younger. At that time a Burgundy wine was synonymous with Nuits.

The vine

Geographical situation: Nuits-Saint-Georges has a strong, unbridled personality. The town is perched below the hillside, at the opening of the La Serrée comb. A small stream, the Meuzin, makes its way down from the Hautes-Côtes. Les Damodes is the town’s northernmost climat, on the border with Vosne-Romanée.
Surface: 0.9223 ha
Geographical situation: parcel on a steep slope.
Exposure: East
Plantings: 1985/1986

Grape variety: 100% Pinot Noir

Soil and subsoil: very pebbly and calcareous. Clayey silt at the top of the slope and pure silt at the bottom..

Planting density: 10 000 vines/ha

Rootstock: only clones.
Organic agriculture. Received official approval Ecocert® in 2000.

Pruning: Guyot

Vineyard news: Ullage planted out. Earthing-up of the vines in winter. Spraying of nettle and rhubarb, horsetail, yarrow, tansy, comfrey tea during each treatment. Biodynamic preparations 500 and 501 at the end of the winter and of 501 in spring before the flower. Suckers removed in spring.

The wine

Harvest date: August 31st, 2018 (fruit day).
Hand-sorted in the vinyard and on arrival in the winery.
Yield: 44.5 hl/ha

84% whole bunches, not crushed and vatted by gravity.
No yeast addition
Maceration: pre-fermentation, cold (12-15°C) during 5 days.
Length of maceration: 20 days.
Light pumping-over every day until the end of maceration.

Length: 18 months in oak-barrels.
New barrels: 35 %
Origin of wood: Cîteaux, Tronçais.
Light and soft cartridge filtration. No fining.

February 10th ,12th, 2020. (fruit and root days)
Limited to 4758 bottles and 220 magnums.

Family Domaine at the heart of Burgundy

Contact us

7bis, rue de l’Eglise
21700 Premeaux Prissey
France

Phone:
+33(0)3 80 62 48 25
Fax:
+33(0)3 80 61 25 44
vougeraie@domainedelavougeraie.com

Taste & buy our wines
private customers

Are you passing through Burgundy?
Find our wines at La Maison Vougeot :
1, rue du vieux château
21640 - Vougeot
Burgundy - France
+33 3 80 61 06 10
+33 6 83 79 44 49
contact@lamaisonvougeot.com


(Visits exclusively for the trade by appointment.)