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Burgundy/Beaujolais Producers
Name: Burgundy/Beaujolais
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Marcel Moreau originally developed this domaine in the 1960s. His son Bernard Moreau took over in 1982, pioneering estate bottling and the separation of the various premier crus into individual cuvees. However, it was when Bernard’s sons Alex and Benoit arrived in the early 2000s that Domaine Bernard Moreau really began to acquire a serious following. Alex handled the winery, Benoit managed the vineyards, and Bernard Moreau became known for some stunning wines in a very contemporary white Burgundian idiom. bright, tense, mineral, and full of energy.
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We saw Antoine Jobard this year for a change. He is gradually taking over more responsibility for the wines. The wines had just been racked and put onto their fine lees for the second winter in cask. The `07 harvest was finished in early September and the grapes came in with a high malic content, which will stand them in good stead from a structural point of view, and the natural alcohol was around 13%. The ripeness of the fruit combined with the high acid levels means that the wines are balanced and have good richness. -
Cyprien Arlaud has the natural confidence of a man at the top of his game. He has been making the wines at Domaine Arlaud since 2001 and, as he sees it, he is now reaping the benefits of his early switch to organics, followed swiftly by biodynamics. He also puts in prodigious amounts of work in the vineyard, and the domaine employs considerably more vineyard workers than any of the near neighbours.
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Tasting over the last few years I have never been in any doubt that Ballot-Millot is one of the finest white wine domaines in the Cote de Beaune. From his cellars in Meursault, Charles Ballot fashions a set of wines that invariably brim with verve, tension and energy. He is the 15th generation of his family to front the domaine, so perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that he knows what he is doing. Nor he is afraid to innovate; his wines are very much in the modern mode, lean and elegant, with a deliberate touch of reduction.
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The Jura's rich mix of microclimates and soils has long drawn comparison to the Cote d'Or, located on the other side of the Saone river. In the 19th century, 20,000 hectares were once planted to vines in its rolling hills. Unlike Burgundy, however, it lacked the resources to recover from the ravages of phylloxera, and even today only a small fraction of its potential is being realised — increasingly and rightly the subject of savvy drinkers' attentions, despite tiny yields and tight allocations.
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Amelie Berthaut is one of the leading lights among a new generation of growers, and since she took over in 2012, she has turned a relatively obscure family domaine into a hot property. She is also credited with putting her home village of Fixin back on the map; while it was widely overlooked until recently, in the 19th century Fixin was considered to have parts the equal of Gevrey-Chambertin. Amelie inherited an impressive array of vineyards from her parents, and has since managed to expand her reach further.
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Berliquet can seem like a relative newcomer. In fact it is an historic estate, but one whose grapes for generations were sent to the local co-op. In-house bottling did not begin till 1978, and so, despite the excellent location, it wasn’t even classified till 1986. Nicolas Audebert freely admits that when the Wertheimer brothers acquired Berliquet in 2017, the intention had been to roll the vineyards into their neighbouring Chateau Canon.
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Fabien Moreau says his goal is to make `the most classical Chablis possible` - and the way to achieve that is `through a balance between ripeness and tension`. Domaine Christian Moreau was only officially constituted in 2002, but in reality is the culmination of six generations of work and history. Quality is always outstanding here, and the wines offer the epitome of the `oyster shell` character habitually attributed to Chablis; they are mineral and intense, tangy, structured, sometimes austere but always elegant.
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Thanks to the Australian government, who vetoed his visa after the French started nuclear testing in the Pacific, the young but highly experienced Benjamin Leroux stayed in France in 1999 and ended up at Comte Armand, where he had done some work experience. This is a young man in a hurry and the changes to this 7.5 ha property came fast. The first was to move to a completely biodynamic culture and picking at phenolic ripeness. Less extraction than previous regimes and a post-fermentation maceration have softened what were, for many, tough wines with little grace.
