Burgundy Focus 4: Ponsot’s Clos de la Roche & Morey Monts Luisants 1934-2019

BY NEAL MARTIN | MAY 30, 2023

Earlier last year, I was invited to Domaine Ponsot for a tasting of their Clos de la Roche and Morey-Saint-Denis Monts Luisants Blanc. No details were shared other than it would be an “exceptional tasting” consisting of 15 vintages of each. That was enticing enough to tweak my itinerary and detour into Morey-Saint-Denis. Arriving promptly on a rather overcast morning, I saw the usual faces, none of us any the wiser about what was about to unfold, save for the fact that vintages would be revealed one by one. It was when we skipped back from 2019 to 2001 within three bottles that there were glances around the room. Just how far back in time would we travel?

As it turned out…quite a chunk of time.

The event was organized to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Domaine Ponsot. For this article, allow me to adumbrate the history of the Ponsot family and encourage anyone with a passing interest not just in Ponsot, but Burgundy as a whole, to seek out their monograph From Vine To Wine published to mark the occasion. This is no hagiography. It brims with fascinating historical details pertaining not only to the Ponsot Domaine but the entire region since members of the family have, to varying degrees, been instrumental to its development throughout the last century, notwithstanding that it contains many evocative photographs through the decades, a couple of which are reproduced herein. Though Domaine Ponsot owns various holdings in the Côte d’Or, I focus on what might be considered the estate’s signature wines that were shown at the tasting.

On the left, William Ponsot, founder of Domaine Ponsot and on the right, Hippolyte Ponsot.

History

Guillaume Vivant Adolphe Ponsot, born in Dijon in 1842 and commonly referred to by his nickname “William”, returned to live with his mother, Sophie, in Saint-Romain after he was wounded in the Franco-Prussian war. At that time, the family owned around 18 hectares of vine in the village, with parcels up in Gevrey from the maternal side of the family that were sold due to inheritance laws. Eschewing his legal qualifications, William Ponsot began expanding his vineyard holdings. Through his notary, William Ponsot learned that Mon Étienne Liébaut wished to sell his parcel in Clos des Monts Luisants along with a miniature twin-turreted château. The purchase was completed in 1872 for the sum of 20,000 Francs. This climat was first mentioned back in 1175 by Cistercian monks, and documents imply that even in this primordial era, it was cultivated with white grape varieties. Ergo, its legacy as an anomalous enclave of white grape varieties stretches back through centuries, though like practically every grower, Ponsot sold the fruit to négociants. The vineyards were ravaged by phylloxera, and replanting took place from the end of the 1890s. In 1911, Ponsot planted some Aligoté, bucking the trend for Chardonnay, which is easier to cultivate and less fickle. William and his wife Clémence did not have any children. Consequently, the domaine passed to his 27-year-old cousin Hippolyte in 1913 on the proviso that he would never sell the estate, thereby removing any potential claim from William Ponsot’s siblings. It was not until 1922 that Hippolyte permanently relocated down to Morey-Saint-Denis and committed himself as a winemaker.

Things were tough for him and his wife Adrienne as the vines were in poor condition, and Burgundy was a far less noble wine than Bordeaux. At the end of the Twenties, Hippolyte embarked upon a wholescale replanting program to upgrade quality. In 1925, he acquired 0.91 hectares in Clos de la Roche from the Blic family, who carved away other plots within the climat and sold them to eight different families. He was only able to expand upon this initial purchase with two further acquisitions from Mademoiselle Ory in 1952 and 1953. By that time, Hippolyte had already been instrumental in introducing an AOC system in Burgundy to stamp out fraud and outlaw some more esoteric grape varieties.

It should be noted that initially, in 1935, Grand Cru status was restricted to only around four hectares of Clos de la Roche. It was only years of protest and petitioning that the entire 16.89 hectares became recognized as Grand Cru. However, authorities insisted that the Aligoté in Monts Luisants should be phased out over an unspecified period of time. The omission of any deadline was either an oversight or an assumption that it would be carried out, given Chardonnay’s supposed superiority. It was a crucial oversight, and remaining loyal to Aligoté, 80% of the vines planted in 1911 remained in situ. During these years, thanks to his close relationship with Raymond Baudouin, who founded Revue du Vin de France, Hippolyte built international ties with important American distributors like Franck Schoonmaker. Encouraged by Boudouin, Hippolyte presciently commenced bottling his own wines far earlier than his peers, the first bottling namely 5,000 bottles of 1921 Mont Luisants Blanc. Though wines had been exported internationally already, the first bottles to be exported to the United States were 480 bottles of 1934 Clos de la Roche, bound for New York.