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Bouchard owns roughly a third of Chevalier-Montrachet and is the only house with parcels on all four of its terraces. The domaine bottling, from a warm and generous 2009, seventeen years on — and the question of whether the hill's tension survived the sun.
2003 was the summer Europe cooked. White Burgundy from that year was written off almost before it was bottled: too much alcohol, no acidity, drink it up. Twenty-three years on, the acidity was the first thing to arrive in the glass. Bottle 1,709 of 2,871.
2004 spent two decades as Burgundy's unloved vintage. At twenty-two, this Chapelle-Chambertin made the case for patience — quiet, lacy, held up by acidity that finally learned its manners.
Bonnes-Mares is called a Chambolle wine — but Dujac's parcel sits at the Morey end, just below Clos de Tart. At nineteen years, the 2007 was open, fine-boned, and stonier than expected.
From Lalou Bize-Leroy's private 0.16-hectare parcel, a 1997 that defied everything said about its vintage — stone, salt, pear and anise, precise and impossibly long after nearly thirty years. A new member of a very short personal list.
The Côte de Nuits allows white grapes in exactly one grand cru, and exactly one domaine makes it. After replanting, de Vogüé sold this wine as humble Bourgogne Blanc for 21 vintages — the grand cru label returned only in 2015. This is the third vintage of the comeback.
Henry-Frédéric Roch co-directed DRC for thirty years and always stood at the back of the photograph. This is the wine he made under his own name — whole-bunch, near-zero sulphur Clos de Bèze, from a 2005 only now beginning to open.
2008 was the vintage rescued by a north wind — high in acid, divisive, a year to judge by producer rather than by number. In Pacalet's whole-bunch, low-extraction hands, that acid becomes the spine.
Le Montrachet is 7.48 hectares in total; Ramonet's share is 0.26 — some 1,200 bottles a year from a parcel Père Ramonet secured in 1978. A cool, high-acid vintage, deep gold after twenty-two years.
Same hands, same year — France's smallest grand cru beside its village sibling. Two monopoles of Comte Liger-Belair, both 2006, opened side by side after twenty years: the domaine's starting point against its summit.
When words fall short of gratitude, there is always the upper slope of Puligny. Twenty-two years on, Leflaive's flagship grand cru still held its chalk-and-steel spine beneath layers of honey and toasted bread.
Two Musigny 2007s side by side — Mugnier's 1.14 hectares and Roumier's 996 square metres sit one above the other on the same slope. Iron and earth in one glass, rose petal and silk in the other.
Only two Burgundy grands crus carry an owner's name — Romanée-Conti, and this monopole, Faiveley property since 1874. And 2007 happens to be the very vintage the domaine began remaking its style.
Grand cru fruit from a second pass through the vines, declassified to premier cru under the founder's name. 4,511 bottles in 2011, and most never left France — born privileged, travelling under a modest card.
In 1996 the same hectare of Vosne-Romanée wore two labels — Henri Jayer's and Emmanuel Rouget's. Opening both side by side turned out to be less about comparison than about provenance, price, and what a legend is actually worth.
A walled parcel inside Les Perrières, owned outright by one family — an unusual thing in a village divided into slivers. Opened far too early, and honest about what that costs.
The domaine itself calls Chambertin the masculine one — broad-boned, short on finesse in youth, rounding out with time. Twenty-three years on, that sentence was sitting in the glass.
Mention Faiveley and opinions split — those who remember the old, hard, closed wines, and those who taste the estate now and wonder what happened. The dividing line is roughly 2007, and this 2010 Mazis stands firmly on the new side.
The label states it plainly: 3,330 bottles harvested, and this is number 1,319. From 0.67 hectares of sixty-year-old vines — the smallest production at the domaine, and for decades DRC's only white.
One vineyard, two soils. De Vogüé's parcel sits on the red, clay-heavy terres rouges — where the domaine's Musigny is silk, this is muscle. At twenty years, the 2004 was only just beginning to open its door.
At de Vogüé, 'Vieilles Vignes' is not a special edition — it is the only Musigny the house makes. Twenty years on, the 2004 arrived as texture before aroma: liquid silk over a tension that still hasn't let go.
A house built on Côte de Nuits reds makes only a handful of whites. This is one of them — closed on opening, then long, layered and saline, and still not finished at fifteen.
Malconsorts ends where La Tâche begins. A premier cru that has spent a century being told it belongs one rank higher — and a 2010 that argues the case in line rather than in flesh.
Rousseau's hierarchy is drawn not only in the vineyard but in the barrel cellar: new oak for Chambertin and Clos de Bèze, seasoned casks for Charmes. Not a lesser wine — a different intention, and the light 2011 shows it clearly.
The label says premier cru; the fruit comes from the Musigny grand cru itself — young vines, declassified to protect the old-vine cuvée. Twenty years on, this 2004 smelled of forest floor and carried none of the vintage's feared green edge.
Say 'Lignier' and most Burgundy drinkers think of Hubert or Georges. Virgile Lignier's family domaine is a different lineage altogether — and its Clos de la Roche 2012 opened with dried petals and a Vosne-like elegance.
Le Clos des Corvées is a walled five-hectare monopole at the Prémeaux end of Nuits-Saint-Georges, farmed by Henry-Frédéric Roch with whole bunches, wild yeast and almost no sulphur. The 2011 — an early, cool, uneven year — at ten, from a label that carries a pictogram and nothing else.
Les Suchots is the largest premier cru in Vosne-Romanée, wedged between Romanée-Saint-Vivant and Échezeaux. Nicolas Potel's domaine farms a parcel of it planted in 1937, and the 2012 — a tiny, concentrated crop — showed what very old vines do in a difficult year.
Les Vignerondes sits at the northern edge of Nuits-Saint-Georges, where the commune runs into Vosne-Romanée and the wines start to smell of it. Domaine Leroy's parcel is under half a hectare, and the 2001, at twenty years, was the estate's concentration wrapped around a cru that is usually described as elegant.
Narvaux is a village lieu-dit on the thin ground above Genevrières, and 2013 was the late, cold, hail-struck year that gave Meursault its acidity back. Eight years on, in Colin-Morey's hands, the two had made something taut and mineral out of a commune usually described as rich.
A Gevrey Boillot who moved to Chambolle, farming a scrap of Nuits-Saint-Georges planted before the First World War. Les Pruliers is the town's structured, tannic side, and 2011 was the early, cool, uneven year that Burgundy wrote off and then quietly reconsidered.
Clos de l'Arlot is a walled monopole at the southern tip of Nuits-Saint-Georges, farmed biodynamically and fermented with whole bunches in the Dujac manner. The 2017, from a quiet year after a brutal one, was the young wine on a table of old ones.
Olivier Bernstein had made exactly three vintages when 2009 arrived. His Charmes-Chambertin, blended from old vines in Charmes and Mazoyères, was the Burgundy that followed a Salon and preceded two Krankls — and held its ground.
Pierre-Yves Colin was the first of Marc Colin's children to leave, and the one whose wines came to define a style — big barrels, no stirring, wax over the cork. His regional Bourgogne, from a warm year, five weeks after his youngest brother's Chassagne.
On the twenty-third of July 2013 a hailstorm crossed Volnay in about twenty minutes and took most of the crop — the third year running. What was left was picked in October. A premier cru from that small, late, hard-won harvest.
Aux Reignots sits directly above La Romanée on thin, stony ground near the top of the Vosne slope — a premier cru that in most hands would be a grand cru. From the domaine that owns the monopole below it, in a hot year that suited the altitude.
Maurice Drouhin bought forty-one parcels from eight owners in the 1920s to assemble this vineyard, then found old papers saying it had once made white wine, and replanted half of it with Chardonnay. The 2005, at fifteen years.
Nicolas Potel lost his family domaine, built a négociant business, lost the right to his own name, and started again from scratch in 2009. This Chambertin is from that first year of the second business.
The label says Meursault and nothing more. At this domaine that is enough to make the bottle harder to find than most grand crus — and in 2015, the son's hand was already visible in the glass.
The words Marey-Monge on a DRC label are the trace of a two-century argument over who owned Romanée-Saint-Vivant. The 2014 is the vintage where the vineyard's own character — perfume over power — was easiest to hear.
Domaine Leroy's parcel of Clos de la Roche is two-thirds of a hectare — a few barrels a year of the rarest expression of Morey's greatest vineyard. The 2008, at thirteen years, was iron and dark fruit wound around Leroy's impossible concentration.
Marc Colin had four children and the family domaine has been dividing itself ever since. This bottle is from the youngest son's first real vintage under his own name — seven hectares, nineteen cuvées, and a label nobody had seen before.
A house that stopped using wood at the end of the 1960s, a vintage that lost half its crop to April frost, and a 375ml bottle on a weeknight table. Very little was hidden.
2009 gave the Côte de Beaune ripeness and took away acidity. Morgeot is the broadest of Chassagne's premiers crus. On paper the two should have cancelled each other out — eleven years on, they hadn't.
Échézeaux is the DRC wine people meet first; Grands Échézeaux is the one that explains why the hierarchy exists. The 2014, tasted at six years old, was all coiled structure and saline red fruit — a wine opened a decade before its argument.
A third of a hectare at the northern edge of Nuits-Saint-Georges, close enough to the Vosne border that the wine keeps getting described in terms of the other commune. Leased since 2006, and the only wine the domaine makes outside its home village.
Morey borrowed its surname from this vineyard in 1927. Georges Lignier owns more of it than anyone — and in 2013, a delicate year met the most delicate of Morey's grand crus.
The plainest wine a great Chassagne address makes, from the year a single April night took roughly a third of Burgundy's crop. At four years, it was brisk, chalky, and entirely unbothered by its own modesty.
A village Vosne-Romanée that sits directly under the family château, on old vines and heavy clay. Opened alongside a La Tâche and a vintage Krug, it had no business holding its own — and it held its own.
2008 was a summer that frightened Burgundy — grey, damp, and late. Then a dry north wind arrived in September and rewrote the vintage. At twelve years, La Tâche was still a young wine, and the year's nervous energy was exactly the point.