We Taste Test Kei Shiogai Pommard Poisot: From Burgundy’s Most Sought-After Micro-Négociant Whose Collectors Join Harvests Just For The Right To Buy

“I can’t accept any visits or tasting. Imagine asking for a tasting at 3 star Michelin restaurants.”

I rather like the cheek of Kei Shiogai’s comparison. In the space for an Instagram bio, the elusive winemaker has found room to bluntly decline visitors and remind us of his place alongside three-star restaurants.

Before taking offence, though, it is worth considering the arithmetic of the elusive micro-négociant house. Kei Shiogai is for the most part a one-man operation with just two employees: Kei himself and a secretary. He receives over two dozen requests to visit each week. Allow two hours for each and he would be spending forty hours attending to visitors. Meanwhile, there are grapes to buy, wines to look after and bills to pay.

Kei Shiogai among his vines, face shaded by his cap (Source: Hong-Ly Lao & Robb Report)

Most people who wish to meet the winemaker will have better luck volunteering to join his harvest team. During harvest, up to twenty-five people – mostly returning enthusiasts, collectors and wine importers – join him to pick fruit over three long weekends. Their reward might be first dibs on an allocation of wine. Yes, bring an interest in Burgundy, certainly, but be prepared to work.

Kei’s volunteer pickers working (Source: Hong-Ly Lao & Robb Report)

The demand for this arrangement is substantial. Kei Shiogai is one of Burgundy’s brightest new cult producers with extraordinary collector demand despite having no inherited vineyards, no historic estate and a commercial track record of just a couple of years. Wine retailers such as the Beaune-based Athenaeum restrict purchases to one bottle of Kei Shiogai per customer. The online auction house iDealwine reported in 2024 that a bottle of his Kei Shiogai 2021 Charmes-Chambertin fetched €1,438, placing it among the most expensive natural wines in its auctions. Kei had only begun selling his wine in 2021.

(Source: Pearl of Burgundy, HK)

So how did a 30-plus-year-old former Tokyo sommelier found a house that would make strangers cross borders to find and be willing to work a harvest for the chance to purchase?

A student of Burgundy’s modern greats

One reason Kei attracted attention so quickly was his first-class winemaking CV. His years with Philippe Pacalet, Jean-Claude Rateau, Armand Rousseau and Domaine Roulot put him inside several very different expressions of serious Burgundy. They also gave him experience extending well beyond the cellar, into the pruning, training and harvesting of the vines themselves.

Raised in Tokyo, Kei studied economics and politics at university before working as a sommelier in a well-regarded wine bar. There he “fell in love with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, particularly from Burgundy”, as he told writer Lewis Chester. He subsequently spent time in the New Zealand wine industry before he was earnestly encouraged by many to move directly to Burgundy to pursue his passion for winemaking there.

Lycée Viticole de Beaune (Beaune Wine School) was established in 1884; it is one of the main oenology institutions in Burgundy (Source: Olivier Lemoine)

In 2013, Kei flew to France and began his official winemaking education. After years working as a sommelier in Tokyo, Kei would now be introduced to everything that happened before those bottles reached a restaurant. First came the BPREA in Beaune, a vocational qualification for running an agricultural enterprise, followed by a technical diploma in oenology in Dijon. His recollection of student life is far less picturesque than a succession of Burgundy tastings: for a year he ate pasta with ready-made sauce every single day.

Owner and founder of the eponymous Domaine Philippe Pacalet, Pacalet is known pioneering the micro-négociant model and for his low-intervention style (Source: Wine Lister)

His first cellar job, in 2014, was with Philippe Pacalet of Maison Philippe Pacalet – one of Burgundy’s most influential natural winemakers, known for producing exceptionally aromatic, elegant Pinot Noir and Chardonnay using traditional, low-intervention methods.

For Kei, who would eventually make his own wine without owning vineyards, Pacalet offered a particularly instructive model. Pacalet is particularly respected for establishing the modern premium micro-négociant model. He too had begun without vines of his own, building his production through rented plots and agreements with growers. And despite being a négociant, Pacalet showed Kei how buying grapes could still mean taking a close interest in how they were grown and handled. An early pioneer of natural winemaking in Burgundy, Pacalet sought involvement in the vineyards, fermented reds with their stems and used little sulphur.

Rain clouds above Corton Grand Cru where Kei worked (Source: Kei Shiogai)

Kei quickly rose to become the head of white winemaking at Maison Philippe Pacalet from 2015 to 2017, and by 2018 he oversaw winemaking across the board, including the reds. When Pacalet began farming vineyards of his own, Kei was involved too. During this period, Kei also gained experience working in the vineyards of Jean-Claude Rateau in Beaune, one of Burgundy’s earliest and most distinguished biodynamic estates.

Kei's pruning work beneath the hill of Corton (Source: Kei Shiogai)

These were years spent learning what a vineyard required through the seasons, alongside increasing responsibility for the wines. Kei happily shared with his friends and family in Japanese that, as laborious and manual as the work was, it did not feel like work at all: “普通にただの肉体労働ですけども、少しでもこんな景色を見たら、ちっとも辛さを感じません”. He documented this work in photographs on social media: pruning beneath the hill of Corton, lifting and arranging vine shoots, working in Savigny-lès-Beaune and watching bunches of fruit develop in Ladoix.

A green bunch in Ladoix with uneven, small berries (referred to as "millerandé") and prized by certain winemakers (Source: Kei Shiogai)

In 2019, Kei moved on to Domaine Armand Rousseau in Gevrey-Chambertin for a temporary stint. Rousseau is one of the great reference points for the red wines of Gevrey in Burgundy’s northern Côte de Nuits. Here Kei encountered a completely different treatment of Pinot Noir. Unlike Maison Pacalet, which uses whole-bunch fermentation, Rousseau completely destems the fruit, then gives the grapes a short period of cold soaking before fermentation and gentle extraction that allows colour, flavour and tannin to pass from the grapes into the wine without forcing the process.

Domaine Rousseau in Gevrey-Chambertin (Source: Sotheby's)

By this point, Kei had worked with top Burgundy producers making very different decisions at a fundamental stage of winemaking. Between whole bunches and fully destemmed fruit, Kei would eventually develop his own approach.

Kei’s next winemaking mentor added yet another kind of authority. In 2020 Kei took on a full-time post at Domaine Roulot in Meursault – one of Burgundy’s most prestigious white wine estates. Jean-Marc Roulot farms organically and makes what is widely regarded as a benchmark for Meursault Chardonnay.

Jean-Marc Roulot in his vines (Source: FINE+RARE)

Domaine Roulot is particularly prized for its precision in Chardonnay-making. While the village of Meursault has traditionally been associated with rich, buttery, nutty Chardonnay, sometimes with pronounced oak influence, Roulot’s whites spend time in barrel on their fermentation sediment, followed by further ageing in steel, with a restrained proportion of new oak. This approach champions a particularly restrained and fine style that is elegant and finely structured rather than overtly creamy or buttery.

Here, Kei continued documenting his work in the vineyards – compost being spread by hand, pruning, horse ploughing and candles used against frost. He would later describe his own white winemaking approach as influenced by “somewhere between Domaine Coche-Dury and Domaine Jean-Marc Roulot”.

Spring 2020 during Kei’s Roulot years– a horse ploughing between the vines (Source: Kei Shiogai)

Founding Maison Kei Shiogai

While still working at Domaine Roulot, Kei began working on establishing Maison Kei Shiogai. After spending several years working with some of Burgundy’s most renowned cellars and vineyards, Kei felt more confident in his own abilities and wanted to begin making wines that carried his own name.

Kei Shiogai's first vintage lined up in his cellar (Source: Pearl of Burgundy)

Kei explained his motivation with characteristic bluntness. “I know that my wines will tell the truth. That is why I started making my wines myself. I worked sincerely and honestly, but I was not paid enough. I would like to raise the value of employees in the wine world.”

For all the prestige commanded by Burgundy producers, talent recruitment and retention remain serious challenges. The rank-and-file vineyard and cellar workers of Burgundy have a highly physical job through the seasons, including winter pruning, managing the growing vines and bringing in the harvest, in return for what some regard as only a modest wage.

Kei Shiogai carefully working his vines (Source: Hong-Ly Lao & Robb Report)

Kei promised his followers in Japanese: “I will show the world the technique and knowledge that I, a mere small and powerless foreigner, one employee, gained while working at Burgundy domaines”. He had held substantial responsibility as a winemaker for established houses and estates. Now, Kei was eager to show the results of winemaking when the decisions were entirely his own. In a February 2022 manifesto, he described putting his name on a bottle as “a declaration that it is wine I have approved and vinified on my own responsibility”.

Acquiring Burgundy’s vineyard land was beyond his means, so his route was to become a micro-négociant: a producer working on a very small scale with bought-in grapes – the same model proven by Maison Pacalet. Like Pacalet, Kei would buy the fruit and make the wine himself, and like Pacalet, Kei would be heavily involved in vineyard work even as a grape buyer. “Whilst I cannot afford to buy my own vineyards today,” he told Chester, “I really want to show wine lovers that I can still make very high-quality wines”.

Pinot Noir hanging in Les Cherbaudes, the Gevrey-Chambertin Premier Cru that supplied Kei for his very first vintage (Source: Damien Vignaud)

Kei began by securing contracts with growers from some of Burgundy’s most highly ranked vineyards. For that, he turned to relationships he had built while working in Burgundy. Vignerons he worked alongside introduced him to a grower of the Gevrey-Chambertin premier cru Les Cherbaudes for his first vintage, along with grand cru fruit from Charmes-Chambertin. Kei described the Cherbaudes opportunity as “real luck” and added that “after that, my first wines and their reception did the rest”.

Before Kei’s first vintage, he also recognised that there was already an existing community of ardent Burgundy drinkers back home in Japan. He started a Japanese-language Facebook group for people who wanted to follow his work and learn about Burgundy wine from a producer’s perspective, along with a paid subscription newsletter. Subscribers paid to follow his lectures on Burgundy wine and his work long before they could even taste a wine of his own. They would later receive priority access to his first releases in Japan.

While Kei was still employed full-time at Roulot, the first vintage of Kei Shiogai was produced in 2020.

Kei Shiogai in his growers' vineyards

Making a great Burgundy wine begins with decisions made well before the juice enters the cellar.

Even as a négociant, Kei wants to decide which grapes are picked, when they are harvested, and how the fruit reaches the vat. He has worked for Maison Pacalet and isn’t unfamiliar with the way discussions proceed between négociants and growers. This control has to be negotiated with the individual growers – whether by paying a premium for grapes in better condition or by arranging to pay only for the fruit that he accepts. There are, of course, limits to what Kei can impose. He may ask for less herbicide, but has no power to insist on that. After all, he acknowledged in an interview, “it would be very ill-mannered to impose my views from the outside”.

(Source: Pearl of Burgundy)

But as these relationships with growers develop, certain agreements have extended to pruning, removing unwanted shoots, supporting the growing canopy and trimming it. Kei was pleased enough about the arrangement for Meursault Les Tessons to point out that his team was even allowed to enter their vineyards to pick the fruit.

Harvest dates may also become negotiable. Kei’s usual preference is to harvest about a week ahead of neighbouring growers, where he has permission to choose fruit of better quality. It is, of course, a preference he adjusts on a vintage-by-vintage basis. In the cold, wet 2021 vintage, his Pommard was picked on 24 September, about two weeks later than other domaines.

“In my parcel of Pommard”: Kei’s social media collage from the cold, wet summer of 2021, with wet weather forecasts for Gevrey, Meursault and Beaune (Source: Kei Shiogai)

During the harvest period, every morning, Kei briefs his pickers with photographs that show what type of fruit should be retained and what should be left behind. Unripe berries and grey rot are among the things he points out, along with stalk material that can bring bitterness. Sorting then takes place in the vineyard. Picking stops by midday at the latest, and the grapes are kept at 10°C in the cellar before vatting. They are then placed in the vats gently, by hand, in small lots. A conveyor would be quicker, but he is concerned that it could crush the fruit.

 Every morning of harvest, Kei briefs his pickers on how to identify the type of fruit to pick and which ones to leave on the vines. (Source: Hong-Ly Lao / Robb Report)

All this careful handling to keep the berries whole serves one purpose: Kei wants fermentation to begin within the unbroken grapes themselves, a process known as intracellular fermentation. He explicitly credits the approach championed by Jules Chauvet, the Beaujolais winemaker and researcher whose work helped shape natural winemaking – the same approach that heavily influenced Maison Pacalet, Kei’s former employer.

When intracellular fermentation occurs, enzymatic reactions take place within the oxygen-poor conditions of an intact grape and begin to convert some sugar and malic acid into alcohol and aromatic compounds. All this happens before ordinary yeast fermentation takes place.

This fermentation approach is believed to result in more aromatic intensity with a supple, less aggressively tannic texture – particularly attractive in Pinot Noir where fragrance and delicacy matter as much as power. Apart from aromatic intensity, it also produces distinctive aromas that would not otherwise be produced by ordinary yeast fermentation – including cherry, strawberry and spice-like aromas.

Selection can go further than accepting sound fruit. Kei is particularly interested in millerandage, the presence of unusually small, often seedless berries within a bunch. In Gevrey, he separates tiny millerandé berries for the Baraques bottling, while more conventional bunches go into the village Gevrey-Chambertin. Such berries have much more skin in proportion to juice, which results in concentrated flavour without requiring forceful extraction.

Small Pinot Noir berries from the 2026 harvest. In Gevrey, the tiniest berries are set aside for the Baraques bottling (Source: Vibrant Wines SG)

Kei Shiogai in his cellar

For his reds, Kei maintains a 100% whole-bunch policy – which you may recall was the same approach used by Pacalet. This results in firmer tannins, and perhaps some herbal and leafy notes noticed by tasters of his wine.

 

Whole bunches, stems and all, in the vat during Kei’s first vintage in 2020 (Source: Kei Shiogai)

 

Fermentation begins with native yeasts rather than an added cultured strain, and the bunches spend about three weeks fermenting and macerating.

His is a careful and restrained approach that pursues aromatic intensity without coarse extraction. As fermentation proceeds, grape solids form a floating cap above the liquid. Kei generally refrains from punching down (pushing the cap down to encourage quicker extraction). Instead, roughly thirty to forty litres of wine are poured over the cap each day, mostly with a bucket, to encourage much gentler extraction of colour, flavour and tannins.

He finds a pump a little aggressive, and says the bucket allows him to “judge the aromas more precisely”. For certain wines he might even climb into the vat to work with his feet, explaining that this lets him “feel the temperature and the structure of the grapes better”.

 

Kei working the whole bunches with his own feet during his first vintage in 2020, all the better to “feel the temperature and the structure of the grapes” (Source: Kei Shiogai)

 

His white Burgundies are pressed before fermentation to separate the juice from the skins and stems. Then, he allows the juice to settle before it goes into the barrel for fermentation at low temperature without cultured yeast.

It is then left to rest on the lees to help the aromatics of fruit and oak come together. Depending on vintage and cuvée, Kei may decide to stir the lees sediment to improve contact with the wine – somewhat mirroring the approach of Domaine Roulot, which adopts more measured lees work. His admiration for Roulot notwithstanding, Kei is more generous with new oak usage, using entirely new oak for his 2023 village Puligny-Montrachet for instance.

 

At the press in Kei’s cellar during the 2026 harvest. His whites are pressed before fermentation, then settled and sent to barrel. (Source: Vibrant Wines SG)

 

Kei Shiogai’s style appears to be a careful synthesis of a restrained approach during fermentation and more generous use of new oak during élevage. When it comes to maturing his wines, Kei’s approach generally departs from that of his former employers. Since 2022, most of his wines use around 90 to 100% new oak, which contributes more aroma and tannins. Despite being a small producer who faces the pressure to release his wines earlier, Kei believes longer time in oak is beneficial for the wines’ development. His wines generally receive up to 18 months in oak, or up to 28 months for special cuvées.

 

(Source: Hong-Ly Lao / Robb Report)

 

Indeed, he has previously mentioned being influenced by the approaches of the celebrated Domaine Leroy and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti – two estates that give their most important wines long ageing in new oak. Interestingly, experts have reported being pleasantly surprised at how his wines retain delicacy, with only a subtle oak character even when matured entirely in new oak.

 

Since 2022, most of his wines have been raised in 90 to 100% new oak (Source: Hong-Ly Lao / Robb Report)

 

He tastes both his reds and whites regularly, appellation by appellation, watching for oxidation or other departures from the wine he wants. Kei also uses outside laboratories and purchased an expensive OenoFoss benchtop wine analyser, which lets him check sugar, acidity and other indicators of how a wine is progressing. It bears noting that while highly prized, OenoFoss is generally considered too high-end for most winemakers to own, with each unit costing between US$20,000 and US$40,000. He explained, “I lack patience.” He also analyses wines made by other producers to build a comparative database.

The cuvées of Kei Shiogai

Kei’s Pinot Noirs centre on Pommard and Gevrey-Chambertin, with separate bottlings from individual vineyards within those villages. The Chardonnay range extends through Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet to Corton-Charlemagne. Between them, the wines span Burgundy’s classifications, from regional Bourgogne through village wines to the more highly ranked premier cru and grand cru vineyards.

 

(Source: Musigny Wines)

 

These are small productions divided into even smaller lots. For reference, the 2023 Bourgogne Blanc Les Famelottes amounted to 684 bottles, while the 2022 Puligny-Montrachet Les Petits Grands Champs filled just 299.

Perhaps one of the most memorable early cuvées was the Charmes-Chambertin, which was only produced from the 2020 to 2022 vintages, until the grower ultimately decided to keep its fruit to make wine itself. Wine writer Greg Sherwood MW found it to have great complexity and a long finish in a subtle wine, describing it as a “paradigm-shifting wine”. Kei himself described it as the bottle he would like to have for his final meal.

 

(Source: Pompette Salon TW)

 

Kei’s standard range of reds from Pommard and Gevrey-Chambertin is no less celebrated, described as perfumed, delicate and complex, with florals, sweet red fruits, especially strawberry, and exceptionally fine tannins. A wine that delivers considerable flavour and aromaticity without feeling cumbersome.

Pommard makes that intention particularly interesting. The village, in Burgundy’s southern Côte de Beaune, has a longstanding reputation for powerful, tannic reds. Kei’s Pommards have prompted drinkers to reconsider what they expect from the name. Thanks to the gentle extraction used by Kei, the wine is described as having structure, but with considerable lift and subtlety, with ethereal floral and airy red cherry fruits.

Kei’s first Pommard harvest, with crates, pickers and the team at sunset (Source: Kei Shiogai)

 

The whites are refined in their own way, showing citrus, stony minerality, tight concentration and creamy textures. White Burgundies that have appreciable richness while retaining definition and freshness.

Kei’s first Corton-Charlemagne, a grand cru Chardonnay, came in 2022. Tasters describe white florals, pear, limestone minerality without the heavy butteriness of the appellation. This is intensity with precise definition and structure. Kei proudly called it his “best white” at the time.

 

The Kei Shiogai Corton-Charlemagne tasted at South Bridge Reserve, Singapore (Source: Wang Gang) 

 

One of the more intriguing whites in Kei’s cellar comes from fruit harvested considerably further away. Alongside his Chardonnay, he makes Riesling from Alsace, including fruit from the grand cru vineyards Brand, in Turckheim, and Goldert, in Gueberschwihr. As this wine is neither made in Alsace nor grown in Burgundy, it is consequently sold as Vin de France.

Kei isn’t the only Burgundian winemaker who has looked beyond the region for grapes. Repeated frost-related losses in 2021 have led Burgundy producers to look to Alsatian fruit. While it loses its Burgundy appellation on the label, the winemaker gains the freedom to explore other ways of making wine.

 

The Kei Shiogai Cuvée Dame Gantzer Riesling (Source: Yannick Durbaca)

 

While most Alsatian winemakers focus on preserving the acidity and aromatic character of their wines and use steel vessels with no malolactic fermentation, Kei’s Riesling receives a distinctly Burgundian treatment, undergoing full malolactic fermentation and maturing in oak barrels (up to 50% new) in his cellar. Kei describes his Rieslings as showing the fruit’s true potential, synthesising the classic aromas of lemon, ginger and apple terpenes (the crisp green-apple scent) with the recognisable maturation aromas associated with Burgundy whites.

 

The Alsace Grand Cru Goldert above Gueberschwihr, one source of Kei’s Riesling (Source: Florival)

From a first Pommard to an international cult following

Kei’s first vintage quickly found advocates in both France and Japan. In Burgundy, the breakthrough came in 2021 when Charles Bufane, owner of Le Soufflot in Meursault, bought his Pommard and began opening it for visiting wine professionals. Recommendations over restaurant tables introduced him to more in the trade. A flurry of requests to buy soon followed. Other Burgundian restaurants took up the wines, and his French placements would eventually include three-star Michelin restaurants such as Plénitude in Paris’s Cheval Blanc Hotel, and Troisgros in Ouches, near Roanne.

 

Plénitude in Paris’s Cheval Blanc Hotel (Source: Benoit Rocher)

 

In Japan, he already had an audience waiting. As mentioned earlier, Kei had amassed a following on a Japanese-language online community around his accounts of working in Burgundy. Subscribers received priority when Luciole, his Sendai importer, brought in the first vintage. An allocation at Isetan also sold out almost immediately. Tastings followed in places like Sendai and Tokyo.

 

Kei's first vintage ready for a wine dinner in Sendai (Source: Luciole) 

 

Many of Kei’s early followers – such as Japanese food writer Rie Katahira – were quick converts. They might have joined for his explanations on wine, weather and vineyard work, before becoming sufficiently interested in the person behind them to buy all four wines in the subscribers’ first offer.

The international following developed rapidly afterwards. By 2022, his bottles were reaching drinkers in Switzerland, Denmark and Italy, while importer Pearl of Burgundy introduced him to Hong Kong buyers. That same summer, English wine merchant Andrew Pavli met him in Beaune and subsequently became his UK importer. Critical attention followed from the likes of Sherwood, who praised the perfume, precision and concentration of the 2021 vintage.

 

Kei, joining his importer in Hong Kong (Source: Pearl of Burgundy)

 

Barely three years after his first commercial sale, restaurant recommendations, an existing Japanese following and enthusiastic importers had carried his name quickly and widely abroad, with tiny quantities that gave new admirers precious few bottles to pursue. Kei Shiogai is Burgundy’s newest cult wine. 

Kei, the man himself, would prefer to remain less recognisable. His display photo intentionally hides his face, and published media portraits often show a man with a cap deliberately obscuring his eyes or revealing only a side profile. He has explained that he values his privacy and did not want strangers approaching him in the street regarding his wine. His Instagram biography also discourages photograph requests. Writers have suggested that years of working in Burgundy may have weathered away Kei’s classic Japanese subtlety in communication. He is forthright and direct in conversation, much like many a Burgundian winemaker.

 

Kei's harvest team at the Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru La Garenne, high on the slope below Le Trézin (Source: Vibrant Wines SG)

 

Yet people who know and work with him describe a warm and earnest friend. Sherwood has written of being welcomed into the small cellar, getting to watch Kei work and to taste from barrel over successive vintages. For those admitted into his inner circle, the experience includes a generosity that a terse Instagram biography scarcely suggests.

For the bottle accompanying this feature, we return to Pommard Poisot for the Kei Shiogai Cuvée Geneviève. Let’s give this a taste!

Wine Review: Kei Shiogai Pommard Poisot

Vintage 2023 of Cuvée Geneviève. Fruit was fermented whole-bunch with native yeasts using a gentle extraction, followed by approximately 18 months of oak-ageing with up to 90% new oak.

This cuvée takes fruit harvested from Le Poisot, a named vineyard within the Pommard appellation, particularly from a single plot bordering Volnay grown on clay-limestone soils.

The 2023 season was said to be abundant, with excellent flowering after a warm, dry winter and a bright but cool spring. A cooler stretch in July and August was followed by heat late in the summer, which reached 35–36°C in August, during which growers had to begin working from dawn and stop work by midday. Kei’s own harvest began on 8 September and had finished by 23 September.

Tasting Notes

Colour: Ruby-garnet.

Aroma: Driven by concentrated, luscious red and black fruits. It opens almost bubblegummy, with vibrant darker fruits of dark cherries, black plums, blackcurrants, mulberries and blackberries that seem to stay ever-present, along with a chewiness of pastilles, gummies and black liquorice, garnished with exotic spices of cardamom, liquorice sticks and mulberry leaves. Alongside light toasted oak, cacao and a garrigue note, it has an evocative oriental fragrance of sandalwood, incense and dried rose and violet petals, offering up this mustiness of potpourri. There’s a stony quality to it, of blackcurrants and mulberry leaves crushed over granite and topped with pine and other stemmy nuances. It’s altogether exuberant and candied with a chewy aromatic texture, filled in with cool dark fruits accompanied by exotic spices, dried florals and mountain stone.

Taste: Medium-bodied, it’s just as chewy and plush, with textural chomp yet at the same time borderline weightless and of silk. The body is filled in with concentrated blackcurrants, blueberries, mulberries, wild strawberries, sweet-tart hawthorn berries, with that black liquorice and mulberry leaf chew, alongside more subtle notes of leather and followed by a restrained saline, hammy meatiness. The acidity is bright and polished, with the classical Pommard tannins structured but very silky and refined. There’s again a slight mountainous stony quality here, of high-altitude air and granite that supports the cool dark fruits and meatiness. Growing notes of earthiness and spice along with a garnish of delicate dried rose and violet petal florals, with also some woodsy bits of liquorice sticks.

Finish: Medium-plus in length, both mineral and floral. Chewy black fruits, cherries and blood orange carry through, more lifted through the finish with blue florals and violets gaining prominence. Black liquorice, liquorice sticks, mulberry leaves, granite, some stony ferrous character with salty meatiness all coalesce. The tannins are now more powdery and a little grippy, evoking a touch of leather and almond skin. It’s an elegant and silky, satiny finish, with a lingering dark-fruited blackcurrant chew.

My Thoughts

This is a surprisingly elegant and polished Pommard. It delivers the concentration, depth and structure expected of the appellation – a perfectly executed wine of its typicity. It doesn’t show anything far out of the ordinary, but instead delivers a rather light-footed, almost ethereal quality that tasters keep writing home about.

Evocative and sensual, it initially draws you in with that core of bubble gum, cherry and blackberry fruit, with nuances of graphite and stone. Then the palate is lifted and silky, with a really fine tannin structure that offers chewiness and chomp. Violets and light potpourri perfume provide lift at all times. And unlike very restrained wines, you do get to see a touch of oaked aromatics even as it doesn’t feel overly extracted as it draws everything it needs out of the fruit.

@CharsiuCharlie