2021 Bourgogne Aligoté

This is a new addition to my roster, a last-minute one since I receive a visit request that coincides with a free hour at the end of the following day. It demands a hazardous drive through the rain from Morey-Saint-Denis, though I find these wines worth the journey. I meet William Waterkeyn, a young, tousled winemaker, with infectious enthusiasm, at the winery (adjacent to the level-crossing as you enter Santenay).

“Since 2020, the estate has been owned by a French doctor who was in biomedical research,” he explains. “He bought it from Sir David Murray and, before that, the Jessiaume family [who founded the estate in 1850]. I’ve been here for eight years. I used to work at Alex Gambal and with Géraldine Godot [Domaine de l’Arlot]; also, I did one vintage in Oregon at Rex Hill. I’m in charge of all the winemaking. It’s a 15-hectare estate with one-quarter based in the Santenay appellation. We have a négociant side which is about 20% of the volume, though there is just one white and two reds in 2021. We have been organic since 2016 and certified since 2019; we practice low intervention vinification with no SO2 apart from a little during maturation and fermenting with natural yeasts. We do a gentle crushing, just breaking the skins to keep the berries intact, which means the wines sometimes have a carbonic profile. We undertake a gentle extraction, which means we don’t do any pigeage, just remontage and some déléstage with cold maceration, around five days, before alcohol fermentation and a two- or three-week cuvaison. The barrel maturation is in oak barrels for 12 months and then six months in stainless steel for the whites before bottling; the regional wines are bottled the summer before harvest. The reds are aged for 12-16 months in barrel with a couple of months in stainless steel. We use around 15-25% new oak for the Village Crus and one-third new oak for the Premier Crus. We export 80% of our volume.”

I particularly enjoy the Santenays from this address, especially the slightly pretentiously entitled 2021 Santenay Les Gravières "Numerus Clausus" 1er Cru; however, my pick is a superb Beaune Les Cents-Vignes that vies with the Volnay Les Brouillards. The 2021 Auxey-Duresses Les Ecussaux 1er Cru caught my attention from an appellation that did rather well in this difficult vintage. I look forward to returning.