Franck’s Aloxe-Corton has a dense purple core and some firmly concentrated fruit. Very promising: this should be a keeper. It offers concentrated, deep red fruit, a classical, firm structure and excellent persistence.

Franck Follin-Arbelet reports a relatively small crop, after a difficult flowering (too hot and dry) and some hail in Pernand-Vergelesses and Aloxe-Corton. Nonetheless the grapes resisted the damp middle of the summer well and ripened properly at the end. Harvest began on 13th September and though the sorting table was needed to remove hail damage and dried grapes, the results here are very successful in 2014.

Bright and pure purple, with an attractive bouquet of red fruit, some darker notes and a little black cherry. It is quite ripe, yet full and sensual with excellent length. Delicious.
Jasper Morris MW, Burgundy Wine Director

Franck Follin-Arbelet’s domaine, based in Aloxe-Corton, makes its first appearance in our En Primeur for the 2012 vintage. He doesn’t own many vineyards, and they aren’t in the trendiest part of the Côte, but he makes sublime wines in a very pure, understated style. As a child Franck spent holidays in the village, then worked part-time in the vineyards, in due course marrying a local girl whose family had some vineyards – enough for Franck to set up as a vigneron in 1993, subsequently adding further vines through rental agreements. Overall his 2012 crop was down by 30% to 50%.

This wine is built by the limestone, there being hardly any top soil: “light but not thin”, says Thibault. Bright, fresh fruit on the nose, and it is actually surprisingly fleshy on the palate behind, with some velvet on the bones.
Jasper Morris, MW - Wine Buyer

The vintage began here on 6th October, once again being short on quantity but with good qualitative potential. Thibault feels that the 2013s can take a long barrel ageing, perhaps up to 24 months. He is using fewer lees, but finer, in order to avoid too many reductive problems.

Thibault describes this wine as “light but not thin”. It is much finer-boned than other, sturdier, archetypal Aloxe-Cortons. It is a beautiful, pure, light red colour; really elegant and stylish, with sweet, ripe fruit. It is indeed light on its toes.

Thibault has made a fine and elegant range of 2014s, with little sign of the reduction which has sometimes prevailed here in the past. He has employed a fair proportion of whole-bunch fermentation, sending a crack team of pickers into the vineyards ahead of the rest to select the healthiest bunches. Another interest at the moment lies in finding the perfect toasting for his barrels, often choosing a minimal approach. We shall also be making a separate offer of Thibault’s brilliant 2014s from his Moulin à Vent estate.