Les Petits Lieux Nuits-Saint-Georges 2024
£64.75
The wine
Elegant and precise, with vibrant black cherry and redcurrant married to a subtle spiciness and earthy notes. Chalky tannins give structure and a bright acidity drives the complex flavours onto a lingering finish.
The blend draws on four lieux-dits within the village: Les Charbonnières, Les Fleurières, Les Charmois and Les Damodes. Nuits-Saint-Georges is unusually varied underfoot, with marl and clay lower down the slope giving way to stonier, more calcareous ground higher up, and taking parcels from both ends of that range is what gives the wine its breadth. Destemmed and crushed, fermented in stainless steel on indigenous yeasts with around twenty days on skins, then fifteen months in used barrels.
The producer
Les Petits Lieux
View all Les Petits Lieux winesLes Petits Lieux is the Burgundy project of Laure Guilloteau and Guillaume Rouget, built on a simple idea: that the interesting wines of the Cote d'Or are no longer only in the famous names. They work with small parcels in the less fashionable communes, the petits lieux of the name, where altitude and aspect still have something to say.
Saint-Romain is the clearest example. Tucked into a side valley above Auxey-Duresses, it was only promoted from Hautes-Cotes de Beaune to a village appellation in its own right in 1947, and its vineyards sit at around 410 metres, among the highest on the Cote d'Or. The aspects are varied rather than uniformly south-east facing, so the fruit ripens later and holds its acidity, which is exactly the quality that makes these whites worth seeking out now that warmer vintages have become the norm further down the slope.
The winemaking is deliberately unshowy. Whole-bunch pressing, a long slow fermentation on indigenous yeasts in stainless steel, then a full malolactic and a short rest in used 228-litre barrels. Nothing that gets in the way of the site.
