Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru, Domaine Tollot-Beaut, 2024
Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru, Domaine Tollot-Beaut, 2024
- 75cl
- 13.5%
- White Still
- Chardonnay
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Optimal drinking window: 2029 - 2042
Corton-Charlemagne is one of Burgundy's great white grand crus; a 71-hectare hillside beast that sits between the village gentleness of Meursault and the electric precision of Chablis, belonging entirely to neither. Tollot-Beaut are best known for their reds, which makes their parcel here something of an insider's find: a producer with deep Burgundian roots, making white Burgundy with the same quiet rigour they bring to their Savigny and Aloxe-Corton.
The 2024 vintage delivered a cool, precise growing season that suits a wine like this down to the ground. Expect flint, citrus pith, green apple, and a backbone of chalky minerality, the wine's characteristic saline tension.
"As to the style, 2024 is definitely a cooler vintage with good freshness and transparency and it makes me think of our 2010s. I was very impressed by the quality I found here and a number of the wines are very much worth your interest."
Allen Meadows, Burghound on Tollot Beaut's 2024 vintage
The Corton hill is the only grand cru in the Côte de Beaune to produce both red and white, and the white vines — principally Chardonnay — occupy the upper slopes facing south and southwest, where the soils shift from red marl to paler limestone and white clay. This higher, stonier ground gives Corton-Charlemagne its signature tension: less opulent than Meursault, more mineral and vertical, with a stony salinity that no amount of winemaking can manufacture. Altitude here sits between 280 and 340 metres, and the chalky subsoil drains freely, keeping vines stressed just enough to concentrate flavour without sacrificing freshness.
Corton-Charlemagne is a white-only grand cru within the larger Corton grand cru hill, straddling the communes of Aloxe-Corton, Pernand-Vergelesses, and Ladoix-Serrigny. It is one of only two white grand crus in the Côte de Beaune — the other being Le Montrachet — and commands some of the highest prices in Burgundy as a result. Where Montrachet and its satellites tend toward richness and amplitude, Corton-Charlemagne is a more austere, mineral style that rewards patience more emphatically than almost any other white Burgundy. The name traces back to Charlemagne himself, who is said to have planted white grapes here so his beard wouldn't be stained by red wine.
The 2024 growing season in Burgundy was, frankly, a test of nerve. A wet spring brought significant mildew pressure, and vignerons who stayed sharp in the vineyard — working fast, keeping canopies open, reducing yields where necessary — came out the other side with something worth talking about. Summer brought warmer, drier conditions that helped the fruit recover composure, and harvest arrived broadly on the later side, with growers picking carefully to find phenolic ripeness without sacrificing freshness. Quantity was down across much of the Côte, which concentrates minds as much as it concentrates wine.
What emerged is a vintage that rewards those who put the work in. The Pinots we have tasted carry real precision and translucency — not because they are light, but because the acidity is lively and the fruit unforced. Chardonnays from the Côte de Beaune look particularly promising: taut, mineral, with genuine length. This is not a vintage to panic-open. Most village and premier cru reds want three to five years at minimum, with the better appellations drinking well until 2035 and beyond. The whites are more approachable now, though the best will reward patience too.
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