From our Importer: Chezeaux owns a 0.17-hectare sliver of this outsized grand cru, in the prime sector just above and next to the castle. From these old vines, Jérôme produces a wine that does justice to the immense power and complexity this site is capable of at its best. Rivetingly wild, gamy, and structured, it presents a forceful, iron-dominated mineral core flanked by dark fruit and shot through with muscular tannins. Always the most impenetrable wine in the cellar in its youth, it demands significant cellaring but pays enormous dividends in time.

We were introduced to Jérome Chézeaux in the mid-1990s by Régis Forey, whose father, Jean, was amongst our very first suppliers of wine from the Côte de Nuits back in 1980. We had been looking to supplement the wines that Régis was providing to us from his various holdings in Vosne Romanée and Nuits Saint Georges. He was generous enough to refer us to this small gem of domaine which, to our surprise, encompassed holdings in some of the most prestigious vineyard sites in this southern tier of the Côte de Nuits. We started with the 1994 vintage and haven’t missed a beat since.

The Chezeaux domaine was built on the foundations of an estate owned since 1930 by Julien Missery. Bernard Chezeaux acceded to the ownership of the domaine in 1971 selling most of the wines produced there to negociants during his reign. On his untimely death in 1993, his son, Jérome, took over the direction of the domaine and it was at this moment that we made Jérome’s acquaintance. It was a fortuitous encounter as our collaboration meshed perfectly with Jérome’s intention to increase the amount of wine bottled at the estate.

he estate, which is based in Prémeaux-Prissey just south of Nuits Saint Georges, owns approximately 12 hectares of vineyards, some of which were brought into play from the family holdings of Jérome’s wife, Pierrette. The vineyards, impeccably tended according to the principles of “lutte raisonnée”, are scattered throughout the villages of Prémeaux, Nuits Saint Georges, Vougeot and Vosne Romanée and include, as mentioned above, a series of the most elite lieu-dits in the zone.

Today, the domaine is a true father-and-daughter team, with Jérôme’s dynamic and enthusiastic daughter Lyse employed full-time since 2019. Lyse has spearheaded the creation of several new single-vineyard bottlings, thereby expanding the domaine’s already formidable representation of these special southern-Côte-de-Nuits terroirs.

The Chezeaux house style is difficult to pin down, and in fact even to call it a “style” suggests a certain presence of ego that is not there. Always fully ripe, the wines nonetheless never display a wisp of flab even in the warmest of vintages; they offer the distinct impression that the grapes were harvested at the most perfect possible moment. They are graceful yet not exactly polite; always thoroughly extracted but never pushed. Jérôme and Lyse allow Pinot Noir’s innate silkiness to carry the day, and even in the ripest years they carry an acidity which is noble and true, never masked by undue richness, and always lending the fruit mouthwatering crunch.

Certainly, Chezeaux’s cellar practices serve to enhance this sense of purity: de-stemming fully; fermenting naturally, with malolactic occurring in barrel; racking only once during the élevage; and employing modest levels of new oak, from 10% on the villages-level wines to 30% for the Vaucrains, Suchots, and Clos de Vougeot. But, as with all great Burgundy, the explanation for their singular character resides in that magical, irreducible interzone of human, land, and process. All in all, Chezeaux’s are wines completely devoid of pretense yet riveting in their precise articulation of site and vintage.

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