Louis Jadot
Lavaux Saint-Jacques Premier Cru
Gevrey-Chambertin
2019

The producer

Established in 1859 Maison Louis Jadot is one of the largest in Burgundy controlling over 150ha, 70ha of which are in the Cote d’Or, but also with holdings in Beaujolais and Oregon, USA.  Jadot is a large negociant-manipulant with labels over various levels of quality and price, but the cream is under the Domaine des Heritiers Louis Jadot label, which has established the reputation for some of Burgundy’s finest wines, both red and white.

The modern, state-of-the-art winery near Savigny-les-Beaune may not represent the romance of Burgundy but the wines themselves embody that … beautiful, finely proportioned wines that speak a little of their maker but a lot of their provenance. Louis Jadot is on song.

This quality and consistency are amazing considering that, for example in Gevrey-Chambertin alone, they bottle five of the Grand Crus including an outstanding Chambertin Clos-de-Beze. There are also seven Premier Crus including the Grand Cru challenger Clos-Saint-Jacques.

The wine

Louis Jadot owns 1 hectare right in the central part of the Clos Saint-Jacques premier cru, a vineyard which, according to many, merits grand cru status. Jadot’s vineyard parcel stretches from top of the hill to the bottom and thus has a combination of white marl at the top and clay further down in the soil. The wine spends around 16-20 months in French oak barrels, 30% of which are new.

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.