Vosne-Romanée

The back label of this bottle says exactly how much was made: 1,720 bottles, 35 magnums and 4 jeroboams, drawn from a cuvée that his US importer describes as a blend of four village plots at Vosne-Romanée - Les Communes, Les Jardins, Les Colombières and Les Saules - planted between 1930 and 1980. Jean-Yves Bizot works roughly three and a half hectares in the village, which he returned to in the early 1990s after training first as a geologist and then in oenology.

His method has been consistent for decades and runs against the usual expectations. Whole clusters go into wooden vats with no destemming, are trodden so that plenty of berries remain whole, ferment through a cool carbonic phase without pumping over, then move by gravity into barrel. No sulfur is added during fermentation or élevage, with at most a minimal dose shortly before bottling - and precisely because he works without sulfur, the wines go into all-new barrels, which need no treatment to stay clean. Two writers who visited the cellar report élevage of sixteen to eighteen months. Bottling is by hand, barrel by barrel, unfiltered, each bottle traceable to the cask it came from. The vineyards are farmed organically and deliberately left uncertified.

2018 was the opposite kind of year to the frost-scarred 2016. A very wet winter recharged the water table, then mid-June through August turned dry and hot, touching 40C - one of the three hottest growing seasons in the Côte de Nuits since the war, though with cooler nights than 2003. Mildew pressure was heavy through the wet spring before the dry summer shut it down, and picking began as early as 24 August. The crop was one of the largest in years.