Morey-Saint-Denis Les Champs de la Vigne Qvevris

Les Champs de la Vigne is a village plot in Morey-Saint-Denis, the small commune between Gevrey-Chambertin and Chambolle-Musigny. Culinaries, a French merchant that carries Frédéric Cossard's range, describes it as clay and limestone, planted with vines around sixty years old. Those vines are Pinot Fin, an old strain of Pinot Noir that the same merchant calls increasingly rare in Burgundy.

The cellar choice is what gives the wine its name. Culinaries says the 2020 was vinified and matured in qvevri, the Georgian clay jars buried in the ground, rather than in barrel. Its notes on the following vintage add that the grapes macerate as whole bunches and the wine spends about a year in the jars. Qvevri have become one of Cossard's signatures, and the 2018 of this cuvée went the same way.

The year itself was unusual. Jasper Morris's Inside Burgundy calls 2020 the earliest harvest on record for most producers, after a hot, dry summer. The red crop was small, and the main worry with Pinot Noir was how little juice the berries held. Old Pinot Fin, an early year, and clay instead of oak: a Morey that goes its own way.