Monthélie 1er Cru Les Champs Fulliot 2022

This Monthélie 1er Cru Les Champs Fulliot comes from a climat lying below the village of Monthélie, in the Côte de Beaune, as a direct extension of the slopes of Volnay. The vines of Domaine Parent, a family house from Pommard, grow there on well-exposed clay-limestone soils, ideal for a fine, fragrant Pinot Noir. The estate has been certified organic since 2013 and farms its vines using biodynamic methods.

The harvest is done by hand, followed by selective sorting on two tables, one of them vibrating. The destemmed grapes undergo a cold maceration of three to five days, then a temperature-controlled fermentation punctuated by gentle punching down and pumping over two to three times a day, for a maceration period of 14 to 16 days. The wine is aged for 14 months in French oak barrels, 30% of them new, then bottled at the estate.

This wine reveals notes of morello cherry, raspberry, blackcurrant, blackberry, rose, violet, liquorice, clove and cocoa. Delicious and very enjoyable, it shows a lovely expression of fruit, as clear on the nose as on the palate. Plenty of freshness and round tannins support a silky texture and a delicately spiced 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.