Allocated wines

This is a clear stand-out in the Arlaud cellar. It’s the most dramatic wine in the line up, outpacing the other grand cru with its grip and swagger. A truly great Clos de la Roche.

This comes from the very highest point of Mazoyères-Chambertin, which can also be labelled as Charmes-Chambertin. It has sensational volume with a crystalline purity driving through the finish.

This always delivers huge complexity from the start. It is so deep, and with such a sustained finish you’ll be thinking about it long after tasting.

This always delivers huge complexity from the start. It is so deep, and with such a sustained finish you’ll be thinking about it long after tasting.

Rousseau’s Gevrey might be their least grand cuvée, but it remains nevertheless one of the most sought-after wines, and a window onto their supreme style which can be drunk a little earlier than their premiers and grands crus.

Lavaux St Jacques is a lovely vineyard on the Combe de Lavaux which enjoys the cooling influence of the cold air drawn down the valley. The wine is chiselled and precise.

The Ruchottes always abounds with small red berry fruit, making it a lively and vibrant grand cru. It nevertheless has the gravitas of its grand cru status, and will evolved for many years in bottle.

Only five domaines own Clos St Jacques, and Rousseau’s wine is frequently at the pinnacle. This shows the complexity, suave power, and finesse of a grand cru, with incredible freshness.

Smooth, silky, bright and incisive. This wine is outstanding. The vines sit at the top of the parcel right next to Lafon’s. This location gives a dialled-up minerality, setting it apart from the richer examples produced further down the slope. As classical as they come in Meursault.

Along with Genevrières, you can rely on Perrières to be a sensational wine from Charles Ballot. It shows sophisticated reduction, with limestone bite on the palate and a mineral flourish on the finish. Scintillating.

The vines in Genevrières are over 80 years old, and the wine has a gravitas and presence. It shows weight and persistence, gorgeous amplitude and fabulous length.

This magnificent wine is only made in tiny quantities. There is superb precision on the palate, which is vibrant and mouth watering with a chalky structure. This complexity is no surprise, given that Les Caillerets is one of the finest sites in the village, with particularly stony soils, producing tense, vibrant, acid-driven wines.

La Maltroie is one of the larger premiers crus in Chassagne, and is often one of the most restrained, backward wines in Alex’s cellar. The vines sit right in the middle of the village, opposite the cellar. It has a savoury, smooth length, and a tight, refined power. It feels young, and will enjoy a long life ahead.

Morgeot borders Santenay at the south end of the village, and is not only the largest premier cru in Chassagne, but the largest cru in the Côte d’Or. Alex’s parcel has the benefit of old vines - 50 years old, and their concentration combined with Alex’s practice of long, slow fermentation has resulted in a smoky, textural, delicious expression.

With Richebourg and Cros Parantoux as neighbours, you can expect great things from this vineyard. Amélie has five separate plots across half a hectare (although she gives some of the production back to her aunt, so there is never ever enough to meet demand). The site is so steep and inaccessible that no tractors can reach it, and all work is done by horse or hand. She’s worked hard on this cuvée, which can tend towards reduction. Switching to concrete tanks for fermentation has helped, and the wine is now meeting its full potential.

Amelie’s 0.13 ha parcel was planted in 1973, and sits up close to Clos Saint Jacques. The famously cooling wind of the Combe de Lavaut helps this parcel through the wet growing season, and the fruit it yielded is really something wonderful. This is highly accomplished.

With a spicy, fresh structure, and a regal quality to the fruit, this is a highlight of the Clair cellar. It shows a suave power, and a cool, controlled, elegance. The Clairs are one of only five producers to share this revered premier cru, that many regard as equal to the Gevrey grands crus, which they refer to as ‘the Prince of Gevrey’. It is steep by Burgundian standards, with clay-rich soil. Just three barrels made in 2024.

This is crystalline and taut, with an astonishingly long finish. Clos de Bèze is a slightly steeper and warmer site than Chambertin next door, and the potential heights of complexity and concentration it can produce are remarkable. Most of the vines were planted in 1912, with the rest in the 1970s - affectionately, still referred to as the young vines.

This is a Bonnes Mares of distinction: it is the only part of the vineyard to fall within Morey-Saint-Denis (the rest is in Chambolle-Musigny). It is opulent and inviting on the nose, with a tender and deeply concentrated core. It is one of the most delicate iterations I’ve tasted from the Clairs, meaning it should open up in bottle ahead of previous vintages. However, its complexity and length assure me it will evolve well over time as well, so no need to rush if you can resist.

Pierre owns the last parcel of Latricières before Chambertin begins, and while attention is usually focused on his Clos de Bèze, this is quickly becoming as in-demand. It is suave, dark, and cool: somehow opulent and restrained at the same time.

This is fast becoming one of Burgundy’s most sought-after wines. The vineyard was planted in 1920, and you can feel the power of the old vines in the glass. It is intense and opulent, with plenty of spice on the nose. The palate is impeccably balanced, with vibrant acidity alongside an impressive mouthfeel. This is powerful, yet retains poise and elegance. It deserves plenty of time in the bottle.

Pierre has just 0.4 hectares in Charmes-Chambertin, which is divided into five separate parcels, two of which are on the border with Griotte-Chambertin, on more stony soils. The wine is always tightly coiled, with some noble austerity in its youth.

Duroché owns a sizable 1.2 hectare parcel of this premier cru, and it is arguably the cuvée that best defines the estate. There’s a coolness here, with dancing tannins and incredible purity. Lavaut balances a freshness, due to its position at the base of the Combe, with an opulence of fruit from the vineyard’s south facing aspect.

These old vines produce a distinctly powerful Gevrey, yet with the tenderness of the vintage to let you in. The parcel sits at the very northern edge of the village, and there is a brambly, grippy character to the structure.

Domaine Duroché can do no wrong these days. Everything Pierre Duroché touches turns to gold, from his village wine right up to his grands crus. This is a fantastic entry point to one of the most in-demand names in the region.

Criots is a tiny grand cru, just one and a half hectares, making Fontaine-Gagnard one of the largest owners, with one third of a hectare. The south-east-facing slope, with poor limestone soils, yields a wine with superb power and tension. But this is only achieved when the parcel is picked at just the right moment. Céline says she watches it like a hawk, catching it before the fruit ripens into the tropical spectrum.

Caillerets takes its name from the tiny stones that litter the vineyard’s soil, and it’s one of the village’s most highly-prized sites. This wine in 2024 is chalky, chiselled, and distinctly of its limestone terroir. There’s spiced pear fruit on the mid-palate, too. A triumph.

Le Montrachet is the greatest of all white grands crus, but volumes being what they are in 2024, Céline was only able to make one barrel. There is power and majesty here. Sensational.

Bâtard-Montrachet is never short of showy power, even in youth. It’s smoky, weighty, and concentrated, and overall an incredibly handsome wine.

Uniquely in 2024, the family combined their two premiers crus vineyards (Chaignots and Vignerondes) with their village parcel to make one wine, so drastically small was the crop in Nuits. The result is a massive success in terms of quality: slightly broader shouldered than the Vosne, with a deep and reverberating finish.

Ruchottes is a fairly small grand cru, just 3.3 hectares in total. The Mugneret-Gibourg parcel is in Ruchottes du Bas, and makes a beautiful wine, with chewy density and a luxurious, voluptuous finish. This is rightly regarded as a high-point in the Mugneret-Gibourg cellar.

This wonderful parcel sits just beneath the cluster of houses in the village centre. It makes such a sweetly-scented and elegant wine, with a brilliantly deep fruit core. Perfumed and spiced, with great tension.

This comes from just one parcel in Vosne-Romanée, planted in 1955, and for the past few years has sported the vineyard’s name, Les Lutenières, on its label. The wines are yielding such low volumes that the domaine is in the process of replanting, uprooting one quarter of the parcel at a time. The wine has a sweet density and deep, structured fruit, with profound persistence for a Bourgogne. It will easily age for a decade, which is not something you can say of every Bourgogne.

65% of the fruit comes from Rouges du Bas, the rest from the Quartier de Nuits section of the Echézeaux grand cru. It is one of the truly great cuvées from this cellar: elegant and balanced.

This might just be the best village Vosne out there. It comes from four parcels which host a variety of vine ages. The relatively high proportion of younger vines gives this cuvée an explosive, juicy structure. It is powerful and beautiful with silky tannins, and fresh red fruit, packing lots of energy.

Mugneret-Gibourg has just one parcel within this sizable grand cru, planted in 1954, just next to the château. It is one of the finest examples of the vineyard, with depth, structure, and complexity, red cherry fruit and a full-bodied length.

This comes from a single parcel just across the road from Chambolle-Musigny in Gilly-lès-Cîteaux, called Les Bons Bâtons. It is so red-fruited, with fragrant length, and lacy tannins. It feels more like a Chambolle than a Bourgogne, and comes with considerable ageing potential.

This vineyard lies right in the middle of the village in a small dip, making it a cool spot, giving it a freshness and energy. It has superb floral intensity, and a delicate restraint.

This wine’s power and energy dominate when young, and the promise of its future are clear to see when tasting from barrel. This is an exceptional Cras, with grand cru texture through and through. It’s the most structured wine in the cellar, and possibly the best, too.

You won’t find much better than this, at village level. This is a wine of terrific complexity and nuance, with much of the texture and nuance you can find in her premiers crus, just with a slightly more forward and open fruit, and lighter tannins. It comes from nine plots across the village, and shows wonderful definition.

This is one of the great Barthod cuvées, and Clément believes this year is a very good vintage for the cru: it suits a classical vintage with acidity. Ghislaine has always described it as a loyal friend - it’s always there with open arms, from youth right through to old age.

The Grivots have a substantial single parcel in Clos de Vougeot, which is easy to spot, with its magnificent gate on the roadside. But when they only harvested 7 hectolitres per hectare, there is not much to go around this year. This reduced volume, however, has given what little wine was made an intensity and precise concentration. The small berries ripened perfectly at the end of the season, and the wines shows a finely woven texture, with both power and length. Blood orange and violets perfume the nose, with a little tobacco spice and pepper on the palate.

This is one of the most in-demand wines in Burgundy, and with good reason. It is truly grand cru in stature: profound, complex, with supreme length. Just two barrels made in 2024.

This wine has earned a strong following for its consistently superb quality. It is suave and intense, with an opulent freshness. It finishes with a lingering aromatic note.

Les Beaux Monts is a staggeringly good vineyard site. Its wine is intense and energetic, with elegantly constructed tannins. The ageing potential is dialled up here. It is a wine of tremendous finesse already, but also one that promises much more in the years to come.

There are many who consider Bachelet’s Blanchot-Dessus to be on a par with its grand cru neighbours, Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet and Le Montrachet. The vines were planted in 1927, and this old-vine wine has the presence and stature of its grand cru neighbours. Its shyness in youth will be transformed into majesty with age. Put it away for a few years to see what it can really do.

The domaine used to - technically - rent these vines from Jean-Marc’s mother, Lydie’s grandmother. She passed away five years ago and since then the domaine has inherited the two parcels, from which they make this fabulous wine. It has a power and depth that sets it apart from the premiers crus, with precision and length promising a superb evolution in bottle. Just two barrels produced in 2024.

In spite of appearances, Grands-Echézeaux is much smaller than Echézeaux, and its wines much rarer. In the right hands, it often holds the edge in terms of quality. Where the rest of Alix’s wines are structured and handsomely muscular, this is refined and ethereal.

This parcel, right in the centre of the village, has been owned by the Lafarge family since 2005. It has an ideal mid-slope position, and produces a floral wine with great tension and an intense fruit core: quintessential Volnay. So pure and long, with a velvety structure, bursting with strawberry aromatics.

Although their home village of Volnay is what many people think of when they hear the Lafarge name, their noble Beaune holdings are equally highly regarded. This is fine-boned, with grip, focus and fabulous tension, and will make fine old bones.

For many, Lafarge is Volnay. This is a blend of their lower-lying parcels of village Volnay, four of which lie on the Pommard side, and two on the Meursault side. This wine is always elegant and perfumed, with an expressive silky frame. The fruit spectrum is distinctly red here, and the wine feels poised and sweetly ripe, whilst remaining taut and fresh.

These are the oldest vines of the domaine, now over 100 years old. The Lafarges’ noble Beaune vineyards are held in equally high regard as their Volnays, particularly thanks to Grèves. There is an ethereal sweetness to the tannins here.

This vineyard has been owned by the Lafarge family since the domaine was founded, and is arguably their most famous wine. It is often serious and intense in its youth, but can also show wonderful sweetness of fruit and pretty minerality in youth, it’s hard to imagine it shutting down. Nevertheless, experience dictates that this wine will benefit from some time in the cellar, and given time, its true potential will be realised.

This tiny monopole vineyard is just 0.57 hectares, and along with the Clos des Chênes, is the jewel in the Lafarge crown. They have bottled it separately since 1985, and it has since become their most sought-after release. The grapes are de-stemmed by hand, such is the reverence in which the family hold this site: in their eyes, a grand cru. It has a texture that can only be described as lacy: so fine, so complex, intricate, and detailed.

A large proportion of this comes from Les Barreaux, a superbly well-positioned village parcel (just above Cros Parantoux and Richebourg). It shows silky fruit texture and luxurious depth.

One third of the Méo vines in this parcel were planted in 1920, and their vines reach metres deep into the soils, producing formidably concentrated fruit. The rest of the blend is made up of fruit from vines planted in the 1960s. The overall effect is of great maturity and finesse.

This vineyard lies just below La Tâche towards the centre of the village. It is dark and compact, with some spicy drive on the finish. The tannins are particularly velvet-like in texture.

In 2024 the two Nuits premiers crus of Boudots and Murgers were blended together. It brings together Boudot’s muscular decadence with Murgers’ silky, seductive length.

Rossignol-Trapet owns two very fine parcels of this outstanding grand cru. The vines were mostly planted in the 1950s, with a small section of young vines planted in 2000, and another small section planted way back in 1919. This is such a handsome grand cru, with magnificent structure and length. It builds and builds, and offers buyers long ageing potential

Cool air comes down the valley between Morey-St-Denis and Gevrey-Chambertin, meaning Latricières is a little slower to mature than the other Gevrey grands crus. The wine shows tender, sweet red fruit on the nose, with a more serious, savoury palate. Graceful already, with some age this will take on even more depth and weight.

Suchots is of one of the largest and most famous premiers crus in Vosne-Romanée, just below Les Beaux-Monts and Aux Brûlées, with Echezeaux to its north, and Romanée-Saint-Vivant to its south. It makes a structured and spicy wine, with powerful length and wonderful balance.

In 2024 Sébastien blended his two Nuits premiers crus, Theory and Murgers to create one unique cuvée. It shows the cool structure of Thorey and the sumptuous elegance of Murgers.

This comes from a single parcel in Gevrey, Champ Franc. It has an intense nose full of concentrated fruit. It is spicy, grippy, and sophisticated.

This is the flagship wine of the estate, and the one on which its considerable reputation has been built. Often the most closed in youth, it has the power and structure to evolve magnificently with time. Phenomenally complex and compelling.

The Reignots vineyard sits on the steep incline of the hill as it rises up just above La Romanée. It has very thin, poor topsoil, and produces a wine with scintillating drive and precision.

Half of En Orveaux is included within Echezeaux grand cru. This comes from the upper half of the lieu-dit as the slope rises up, which is classified as premier cru. The views from here are spectacular. It produces a wine with the intense freshness of crushed red berries. A layered and complex palate will reward the patient. On Allocation

This is as fine a village Vosne as you’re likely to find. It comes from five parcels in four different sites, giving a rounded portrait of the commune. It is spicy, fragrant, and incredibly long, with a fragrant, lingering quality.

A well-placed village parcel sits right in the middle of the appellation beneath premier cru Les Charmes and produces a complex, lacy, and layered Chambolle, with particularly smooth and silky tannins.

This is from the original domaine inherited by Sébastien from Sylvain, and always over-delivers. You get the style and swagger of the Cathiard signature, with the open, accessible fruit of Bourgogne Rouge. It’s got abundant red berry notes on the nose, with a toasty kick from the new oak, and a long, satisfying length.

The grandest wine in the cellar, and also the one made in the smallest volumes. The power and complexity of the fruit matched with the new oak is extraordinary.

A painfully small three barrels of this were made. It is the domaine’s flagship wine, and can be relied upon to show the finest characteristics of the vintage. It is sumptuously perfumed and effortlessly refined, with graceful and persistent power. The domaine owns three parcels in this wonderful Gevrey-Chambertin grand cru, including one where the vines are well over 75 years old. It sits at the high point of the Tawse cellar, a culmination of the seriously good winemaking going on here, and a reason why the domaine is singled out year-after-year for critical acclaim.

Like their Suchots, this was another canny purchase that the domaine made in the 1990s, and marks a high point in the cellar. It is so ample and voluminous, wrapping around the palate with its peppery intensity, and succulent, deep, structural tannins.