The Fourth Colin

Marc Colin built one of the larger family domaines in the southern Côte de Beaune — Saint-Aubin, Chassagne, Santenay, a little Puligny — and had four children. The story of the name since then is a story of subtraction. Pierre-Yves, the eldest, left first, making wine under his own label from 1994 and separating completely in 2005; the domaine he built with his wife is now among the most sought-after white-wine addresses in Burgundy. Damien and Caroline stayed to run what remained as Domaine Marc Colin.

Joseph was the last to go. He made a token quantity in 2016 — under two thousand bottles — and then in 2017 took his share of the vines, around seven hectares, and set up on his own. From that modest holding he makes something like nineteen different cuvées, which tells you the vineyards are scattered across a great many small parcels and that he intends to keep them separate rather than blend for convenience.

So this is a first vintage, in the honest sense: the first year the label existed with any volume behind it.

The Year

2017 in the Côte de Beaune was the year growers exhaled. After the frost of 2016 had cut yields brutally, 2017 came in generous and early — a warm spring, a mostly dry summer, harvest starting in late August. The whites are open, ripe and fruit-forward, with acidity that is adequate rather than searing, and they were approachable from the start. It was not a vintage that demanded patience, which made it a reasonable one for a new domaine to introduce itself with.

In the Glass

Opened at home in the late evening, a little over three years from the vintage.

Pale gold. The nose was clean and direct — white peach and yellow apple, a little lemon oil, a light flinty edge underneath, and the oak present only as a faint toasted-nut warmth around the edges. Nothing heavy in it, nothing that read as showy.

The palate had more weight than the nose suggested: rounded, ripe fruit in the middle, then a saline mineral line running under it that kept the finish clean. The acidity was moderate — the year’s signature — but the wine had enough tension not to go soft. It finished on hazelnut and lemon zest, medium length, entirely coherent.

A village Chassagne from a first-vintage domaine is not a bottle to build theories on. What it showed was a winemaker who already knew what he wanted — precision over richness, fruit over oak — and had the raw material to get there. Given the family he comes from, that is less a surprise than a confirmation.