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Domaine Follin-Arbelet

I asked Simon Follin-Arbelet the most difficult question during my six weeks in Burgundy. “If a hot-shot record producer offered the chance for you to make an album, would you quit being a winemaker?” You see, he’s a bit like me, a music fan, except unlike me, he’s in a local band called the PHP’eeez, and when I checked out their YouTube video…they were pretty good, and Follin-Arbelet a pretty good frontman (and I write that as a much harsher music critic than wine critic). Anyway, the group is in limbo at the moment, as all members have been distracted by their day jobs, and he is set on continuing in his father Franck’s footsteps as a vigneron, just one a bit obsessed by Blur and Oasis.

“It was way easier than 2021 or 2023,” Follin-Arbelet explained when we broached the 2022 vintage. “It was a bit like 2019. We were lucky to have no frost and good conditions throughout summer. It was hot from May, but we had showers to prevent hydric stress, and there was just a little oïdium in some parcels. We had one parcel in Aloxe-Corton that was touched by hail…we don’t have a clue when that exactly happened. Probably around the time when there was the storm. We started picking on August 28 when we had expected to start on August 15, commencing with the reds and the Corton-Charlemagne, then took a week off and started again with a smaller team for the Chardonnay, which was quite challenging in terms of recruiting pickers. The alcohol levels are between 13.5% and 14.5%, with just a little chaptalization merely to extend the fermentation. The wines are racked into older oak barrels after nine months. They will be bottled in January or February after racking the wines in stainless steel vats for three months.” Aloxe-Corton is one of those soporific villages that looks like a peach with its ornate roofs but needs more winemakers like Follin-Arbelet to take it by the scruff of the neck and up its game. I think there’s better to come from this domaine. Still, the 2022s has its share of gems, such as a superb Corton Grand Cru, a Corton-Charlemagne that could size up to many a famous grower’s, and an excellent Pernand-Vergelesses Blanc that’s actually better than the minuscule Premier Cru bottling. If you wonder how Simon Follin-Arbelet replied to the question posed, a vintage comes around every 12 months, but that chance for music fame comes once in a lifetime.

From Now, For My Latest Trick: Burgundy 2022 (Jan 2024) by Neal Martin

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2022 Aloxe-Corton Clos du Chapitre 1er Cru

Color: Red

2022 Aloxe-Corton Clos du Chapitre 1er Cru

2022 Aloxe-Corton Village

2022 Aloxe-Corton Les Vercots 1er Cru

2022 Aloxe-Corton Blanc Village

2022 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru

2022 Pernand-Vergelesses Blanc

2022 Pernand-Vergelesses Blanc En Caradeux 1er Cru

2022 Pernand-Vergelesses Les Fichots 1er Cru

2022 Corton Grand Cru

2019 Corton Grand Cru

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