A Rectangle of Nine Hectares Against the Wall of the Clos
The Grands-Echezeaux occupies the foot of the Flagey-Echézeaux slope, immediately west of the Clos de Vougeot, whose wall borders it. The grand cru Echezeaux extends and skirts it on its other sides — Les Treux adjoin it to the north, Les Poulaillères and the heart of the cru look down on it — so that the Grands-Echezeaux reads as a coherent enclave in the middle of a far more disparate whole. Its area, 9.14 hectares as recorded by Monocépage, places it in the order of magnitude of the Musigny (10.86 ha) or of Chambertin excluding the Clos de Bèze (12.90 ha).
Like the Clos de Vougeot that extends it downwards, it has a very gentle gradient, of the order of 3 to 4%, at an altitude of about 260 metres — an unusual slope for a grand cru of the Côte de Nuits, where most climats of equivalent rank are appreciably steeper. It faces, on the other hand, east-south-east, the most favourable orientation of the slope, which amply compensates for the flatness of the ground.
The Terroir: Homogeneity as a Signature
This is the point that really separates the two appellations. Echezeaux aggregates eleven lieux-dits that differ strongly from one another in altitude and orientation: the result is a grand cru of variable geometry, whose quality depends as much on the parcel of origin as on the grower. The Grands-Echezeaux, by contrast, is a single climat, in one block, of constant gradient and exposure. All its vines are set in the same topographic situation.
This foot of the slope, at the outlet of the combe d'Orveaux, is also a sector of deeper and more clayey soils than the upper slopes, which gives the wine its density and its frame rather than its liveliness. The homogeneity of the climat does not therefore mean lightness: grands-echezeaux is the most structured of the wines of Flagey, and the slowest to open.
Climate and Exposure
The climate is temperate with a slight continental tendency, as along the whole Côte de Nuits: pronounced winters, wet and frost-prone springs, hot and often stormy summers. Pinot noir ripens there in the first period, with a strong potential for accumulating sugars for a moderate acidity, sometimes only just at full ripeness.
The east-south-east exposure of the climat ensures regular morning sunshine, and its gentle gradient is compensated by soils that drain properly. The harvest calendar has shifted as everywhere: in 2003, some estates of the Côte harvested in mid-August, a month ahead of custom, an earliness of which the archives had kept no trace since 1422 and 1865.
The Style of the Wines and Their Ageing
Grands-echezeaux is a firm wine, sometimes hard in its youth, less openly generous than echezeaux — Clive Coates notes this explicitly, adding that it needs time, and that the best cuvées match the best clos-vougeot. For Allen Meadows, a fine grands-echezeaux resembles a richebourg deprived of its Asian spices: almost as much power and muscle, the depth, the length and the endurance, but not always the aromatic breadth.
Its ageing follows that structure: five to fifteen years cover most of its life, some twenty years in the great vintages. The crop is hand harvested and sorted, generally destemmed, and ageing classically runs for twelve to twenty-four months. Jasper Morris qualifies the hierarchy with fitting frankness: at one and the same estate and in one and the same vintage, he has preferred the echezeaux to the grands-echezeaux. The contrast between the two crus is therefore statistical, not mechanical.
From "Echezeaux Bas" to Fourteen Owners
Before the Revolution, when the climat belonged to the abbey of Cîteaux, it bore the name "Echezeaux Bas" — the topography already said the essential. The Echezeaux sector had been gathered by the monks through successive donations and exchanges, on the model of the Clos de Vougeot, and appears on the Grand Atlas of the properties of Cîteaux (1718-1730). The AOC was created in 1937, at the same time as that of Echezeaux.
Fragmentation here is real but bears no comparison with that of its neighbour. In the survey published by the review Bourgogne Aujourd'hui in October-November 2017 and reproduced by Monocépage, fourteen owners shared the climat, largely dominated by the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti with 3.53 hectares at the centre of the climat, ahead of Mongeard-Mugneret (1.44 ha), Domaine d'Eugénie (0.50 ha), Joseph Drouhin (0.47 ha), Henri de Villamont (0.43 ha), Gros Frère et Sœur (0.37 ha) and Desaunay-Bissey (0.34 ha), then a series of parcels of less than a third of a hectare. Some fifteen owners for nine hectares, against about eighty for the thirty-six hectares of Echezeaux: there, in a single comparison, is the reason for its consistency. Since these parcels change hands, this breakdown holds good only for its date.