Caves Bailly-Lapierre Irancy 2022

The Irancy from the Bailly Lapierre cellars comes from Irancy, a small winegrowing village in the Auxerrois, south of Auxerre, nestled in an amphitheatre of slopes above the Yonne valley. This village appellation, devoted to red wine, is renowned for its Pinot Noir. The vines root in limestone and marl soils dating from the Kimmeridgian, under a semi-continental climate that gives fresh wines with bright fruit and elegant structure.

The grapes are grown by the winegrowing families who make up Bailly Lapierre, who carry out ploughing, pruning and disbudding throughout the year. At the end of summer, they harvest by hand and sort the grapes in the vineyard, before bringing them to the cellars in open-work crates. The wine is then aged in tank, a choice that preserves the purity of the fruit and the crunchy character typical of Auxerrois reds.

This wine reveals notes of cherry, morello cherry, raspberry, redcurrant, wild strawberry, peony, pepper and forest floor. Its cherry colour invites tasting, while the nose reveals well-established red fruit, supported by fine freshness. The palate is crunchy and moreish, with well-balanced elegance, carried by supple tannins and a fruity finish.

The cradle of wine culture in Western Europe, France owes its first vines to the Greeks of Phocaea, who settled around Marseille some twenty-six centuries ago, before the Romans spread viticulture along the Rhône and the Garonne and as far as Champagne. In the Middle Ages, Cistercian and Benedictine monks cleared the slopes of Burgundy and patiently mapped out the climats, laying the foundations of the notion of terroir. The 19th century brought the glory of the classifications, then the disaster of phylloxera, which wiped out the vineyards before they were rebuilt on American rootstocks; the creation of the appellations d'origine contrôlée in the 1930s then set the rules that would inspire the whole world. Today, France vies every year with Italy and Spain for first place in world production by volume and remains the ultimate benchmark of the Old World, as much for its age-worthy wines as for its winemaking models. Vineyards cover almost the entire country, from the cool north of Champagne and Alsace to the Mediterranean shores of Languedoc and Provence, by way of the oceanic climates of Bordeaux, the Loire and the South-West, continental Burgundy, the steep slopes of the northern Rhône and the high-altitude valleys of Savoie and the Jura. This mosaic of soils – limestone, schist, gravel or rounded pebbles – explains the extraordinary diversity of styles. As for grape varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot dominate Bordeaux and produce structured reds, Pinot Noir is the signature of Burgundian finesse, Syrah of the depth of the Rhône, while Grenache, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Mourvèdre cover every register, from easy-drinking wines to wines for long ageing. Among the whites, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin, Riesling and Viognier offer expressions ranging from lively and mineral to unctuous, all the way to great sweet wines. A land of benchmarks and constant discoveries, France remains the compass for wine lovers the world over.