2022 Clos Saint-Denis Grand Cru

Leroux poured not his entire range of 50-odd cuvées…but most of them. “We started picking on August 26, and everything came in by September 5,” he tells me at his winery in Beaune, adjacent to the sprawling Albert Bichot buildings. “It was a pretty easy season after 2021, and we didn’t have stress in the vines compared to 2018 or 2019. There was just a bit in the lower parts of Savigny-lès-Beaune. There was almost no sorting necessary, no chaptalization or acidification, and there was no stuck fermentation. We use a pied de cuve from our vineyard that we make sure is all Saccharomyces. There is occasionally a lack of nitrogen in the vine, but you can correct that. We made four times as much wine for the whites: 40hL/ha instead of 10hL/ha in 2021. Now we are seeing big disparities in alcohol levels between vineyards.” With such a small armada of cuvées dispersed across the Côte d’Or, inevitably, there are highs and lows, more the latter than the former under Leroux’s control. For every Vosne Village that doesn’t quite cut the mustard, there’s a Gevrey Village that certainly does. I feel that his strength lies more in the Côte de Beaune with superb Pommard Les Rugiens-Haut, Volnay Santenots and Caillerets. Then again, his Chambertin and, indeed, Griotte-Chambertin would happily compare with any grower lucky enough to own land in those Grand Crus.