This medium-bodied rouge, with notes of freshly crushed black cherries and cranberries filtered through stones, would be sublime alongside any kind of grilled or roasted fowl. I poured a glass, grilled some maitake mushrooms, and stuffed them in a grilled cheese sandwich, which was pretty perfect, too.
Discovering Saint-Aubin in Burgundy is a little like stumbling upon an outstanding, but unknown and well-priced restaurant or jazz club tucked back in an alley along your town’s main drag. Wines from this appellation would be as sought after as many others from the Côte de Beaune if Saint-Aubin weren’t essentially hidden behind the towering giants of Chassagne-Montrachet and Puligny Montrachet. For Burgundy lovers on a budget, however, this is a blessing. You can still experience incredibly classy Côte d’Or reds and whites without biting off a sizable chunk of your paycheck. Even though the majority of Saint-Aubin is planted to Chardonnay, reds like Domaine Larue’s Les Eduens prove that the terroir here is also beautifully suited to Pinot Noir. What does “Les Eduens” mean? The Larues named this bottling after the population that lived in the region during the period of the Roman Republic (up until the first century B.C.).
