A Family Name on a Grand Cru

Two grand cru vineyards in Burgundy carry an owner’s name inside the appellation itself. One is Romanée-Conti. The other is this one. On the 3rd of March 1874, Pierre Faiveley bought a walled parcel high on the Corton hill from the Geisweiler family, and it has remained in Faiveley hands — alone — ever since. When the appellation system was being drawn up in the 1930s, a naming dispute with the Latour family ended with Faiveley winning the right to append the family name to the climat: Clos des Cortons Faiveley, monopole, a little over three hectares of shallow, iron-red soil over rock above Ladoix.

What makes this particular bottle interesting is the year on the neck. 2007 was the vintage everything changed at Faiveley. Erwan Faiveley had taken over from his father in 2005; in 2007 Jérôme Flous arrived as head winemaker, and the old recipe — late picking, hard extraction, wines that showed tannin before charm — gave way to gentler punch-downs, more native yeast, and a barrel regime of half new oak, half one-year-old. The house’s flagship monopole, made in the first year of its new identity.

In the Glass

The vintage cooperates with the story. 2007 — an early start, a grey summer, a late rescue — produced reds of perfume and charm rather than structure: fine aromatics, light tannin, early doors. In the glass, the cuvée’s signature ruby-with-violet depth carried dark cherry and spice, the palate dense but smooth-seamed, finishing tidily — the house muscle of Clos des Cortons wearing the vintage’s lighter cloth.

At nineteen years, a 2007 was never supposed to still be standing this comfortably. It is fully open — this was always a year to drink, not to bury — but a grand cru monopole with a hundred and fifty years of single-family stewardship behind it does not fall over on schedule. The old Faiveley built wines that made you wait. The new one, on this evidence, builds wines that make waiting optional.