Domaine Migot Pinot Noir Côtes de Toul 2022

Location: France, Alsace, Lorraine

Winemaker: Camille Migot

Grapes: Pinot Noir

From the Importer Vom Boden: The Côtes de Toul appellation is small, only about 100 hectares. Second, there are few really serious growers (perhaps only one?) looking to make more than just good-enough, cheap-ish wines.

Camille Migot is most certainly serious. He is a young dude; his first vintage was 2013. Migot’s family has been working the vineyards around here for some 13 generations. Thus he has some pretty concrete ideas of what he will and won’t do. The estate, only five hectares in size, is certified organic and the vineyard work is impressive. If these sites aren’t famous, they are loved. You can feel it (and you can see it). Every grape is hand-harvested. In the cellar, Camille is part of the younger generation looking past the “technologies” of the past few decades and returning to something more basic. All fermentations are carried out by natural yeasts. Élevage can be in both stainless steel or neutral oak; bottling is carried out with only the lightest of filtering.

The soul of the wines in Migot’s Côtes de Toul has more to do with Chablis and Chitry than anything else. They are sharp; the fruit can be very detailed, but the layers are always fine and the overall sensation fresh. The minerality, the acidity of the region, has a texture, a saturating quality that is staining and pervasive.

The specialty of the region is probably the “Vin Gris,” a waxy, deep and mouth-coating salmon-tinged rosé that, despite its depth, quivers with acidity. Migot’s version is almost incomprehensible in its combination of texture and power, with lightness and zing. The general blend is about half Pinot Noir and half Gamay.

Migot’s Pinot Noir can clock in as low as 11% alcohol; he does not chaptalize it. Thus it hovers somewhere between the bright and fresh reds of the north (Coteaux de Champenois at 95% off anyone?) and the herbal reds of the Loire Valley. Served with a slight chill, it is a red with the soul of a white wine.

So Côtes de Toul, eh? Y’up.