2017 Pavelot Savigny-les-Beaune 1er Cru Les Serpentieres

Burghound (Allen Meadows) 90

"A pretty if brooding nose reluctantly offers up notes of red and dark currant, violet and humus nuances. The equally graceful medium weight flavors are also quite supple and seductively textured, all wrapped in a slightly more complex and lingering finish. This should also drink well early or with up to a decade of cellaring."

View from the Cellar (John Gilman) 92

"The vineyard of Serpentières can sometimes provide wines that are a bit rugged out of the blocks, but this is emphatically not the case with the 2017 version from Hugues Pavelot, as this is already a very elegant young wine. The nose is terrific, offering up a combination of black cherries, black currants, venison, raw cocoa, woodsmoke, a complex base of soil, discreet new oak and a classic Savigny spicebox in the upper register. On the palate the wine is pure and full- bodied, but not quite as deep at the core as the Peuillets this year, with lovely transparency and fruit purity, fine-grained tannins and a long, vibrant and nascently complex finish. This may well put on a bit more weight at the core prior to bottling, in which case it may nose out the lovely les Peuillets, but right now, the two wines are equivalent in quality and just a bit different in style, as the Serpentières is inherently a slightly more complex wine, but the Peuillets has a bit more mid- palate volume. 2023-2065+."

Wine Advocate (Neal Martin) 88-90

"The 2017 Savigny-lès-Beaune Les Serpentières 1er Cru has a surprisingly opulent, extrovert bouquet, with top notes of blueberry and cassis, almost Volnay-like in style. The ripe, generous palate is rounded and smooth, displaying good concentration but maybe not expressing the terroir as articulately as previous vintages. Let’s see how this develops."