Burgundy Wine Palate Advisor Part 3: Big, Bold Reds & Complex Whites

Discover Bold Reds and Complex White Wines With Our Burgundy Wine Palate Advisor Tool

In part 3 of our series exploring the Burgundy Wine Palate Advisor tool on BurgundyWine.com, we cover red wines that are big and bold in character, and white wines of the complex, structured kind. If you haven’t yet checked it out, why not have a look today to see how easy it makes finding wines that fit your palate perfectly? We’ve designed it so it doesn’t just categorise wines in bulk – it uses our tasting notes from the last 30 years of living and loving Burgundy to intelligently suggest what wines you are likely to love.

This is the spirit of Domaine de Cromey – the home of burgundywine.com by Elden Selections in Burgundy. We have an uncompromising, organic pursuit of excellence in the food and wine of the region, and we love to share it with as many people as possible. The wines you’re about to discover are from master winemakers we’ve got to know over decades, and they’re some of the region’s best-kept secrets. These are their best wines, that we follow from vine to bottle, over many vintages. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have.

The Bold Red Wines Our Burgundy Wine Palate Advisor Recommends

Burgundy is a region that has the ability to produce a wide range of wines with different characteristics. These can be delicate, complex, fruity or bold. It's remarkable that despite using almost exclusively Pinot Noir grape variety for red wines, the region can produce such diverse wines. The varying terroir, weather conditions, and personal touch of the winemakers all contribute to giving each wine its unique personality. Bold and big red wines are usually deep and dark in color, and their thick skins reveal their strong tannins.

If you can, look for the great names in ripe, rich wines; there’s no better place to start than the ‘fist in a velvet glove’ style of wines from Gevrey Chambertin. One monk, named Bertin, must have been a particular wine enthusiast, because it is after his field (vineyard) that the wine is named – it literally means Bertin’s field (or Champ de Bertin). There is a vast amount of very high-quality land here, and consequently there are no fewer than nine Grand Cru vineyards (more than any other Burgundy village). Look for those from Domaine Thierry Mortet, or the Domaine Marchand-Freres.

Pommard is a great name in big, bold wines too. The wines of Pommard offer 28 fantastic Premier Crus to be discovered, such as Pezerolles, En Largilliers, Epenots and Rugiens—whose name is a nod to the ‘ruddy’ iron-rich soils here. Domaine Albert Boillot makes an En Largilliers which is grown in soil with a high content of clay, meaning that the wine is deep, tight and earthy. This is one of the lesser-known but outstanding Premier Crus to discover.

And don’t forget Maranges or Mercurey, both of which offer more fantastic, bold wines. These powerful Burgundy wines also give so many great opportunities for food pairings – try them with Côte de Boeuf or even Wild Boar.

Let Our Palate Advisor Find Your Complex, Structured Burgundy Whites

Don’t think for a moment that you can only find complex, structured white wines at the top end of the market, where you pay the highest prices. The beauty of Burgundy is that there are wines like this at all levels of AOC category (Grand Cru, Premier Cru, Village and Bourgogne)—but you have to know where to look. Allow our Burgundy Wine Palate Advisor to suggest a few:

Ladoix may not be the most recognisable name in wine, but it certainly punches well above its weight in terms of quality. This is one of those ‘lesser appellations’ (lesser in terms of renown, not quality), that burgundywine.com specialises in, and though many wines made here are red, the whites are of the very highest quality. The soil suits white wines; golden straw colored, they smell of flowers and have notes of ripe autumn fruit, plum and apple, pear and fig. They are bright on the palate, often very juicy, but show the firmness of good structure. Their minerality is not unlike their famous neighbor further up the slope, Corton-Charlemagne.

The Burgundy Wine palate advisor recommends Agnes Paquet Auxey-Duresses Blanc 'Patience No 13' in particular (great acidity, zippy mineral notes and lingering complexity), as well as the Domaine Gilles Bouton Saint Aubin 1er Cru 'Murgers des Dents de Chien'. This wine is made in double-sized barrels, with 40% oak which serves to smoothen some of the tannins. It’s a spicy and complex wine for sure, from the amazing attack to the superb finish.

Another fascinating example of a complex structure white Burgundy wine is Pernand-Vergelesses. The vineyards for this appellation are located at the intersection of two valleys at the back of the Corton mountain. This land is shared with two villages – Ladoix-Serrigny, and Aloxe-Corton. That there are 3 Grand Crus here and 8 Premier Crus is certainly no coincidence when you look at the quality producers working here to create these Chardonnays. There is Domaine Marchand-Tawse and Domaine Jean Fery to name but two, whose Chardonnays are pale-yellow or white-gold, turning golden as they age. You’ll notice their special minerality straight away, with aromas of sweet acacia when they’re young, and spices and honey when a little older. On the palate they are charming and mineral, like other whites from the area around the hill of Corton. When it comes to food pairing, think Smoked Trout Croissant, or Monkfish, Roasted Tomatoes, Green Olive Tapenade.

We hope these recommendations of the best big bold reds and complex structure whites from our Burgundy Wine Palate Advisor have given you some ideas of which wines to start with. But if you have any further questions, just contact the team for more advice and suggestions!

Members of our popular Burgundy Wine Club get full tasting notes for all wines that we sell, plus unique hand-selected wines from the cream of our crop of small-appellation producers. And there’s more – you will also receive free entry into a prize draw to win a 4-day stay and experience the magic at Domaine de Cromey. Finally, we have more blog articles on our Burgundy Wine blog, and on our Domaine de Cromey blog.