2022 Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru

As betrayed by the database, it has been a few years since I visited this Domaine in Nuits Saint-Georges, so it was time for a return to the estate run by Alain and Sophie Meunier. Their son Louis took me through the wines. After starting with his parents in 2016, since 2019, he has been fully in charge.

“It’s a family domaine with mainly Pinot Noir vineyards from Corgolin up to Chambolle-Musigny,” he explains. “We have a lot of regional Burgundy and Village Crus. We have been certified organic for 30 years, though it is not on the label. For the vinification, I try to have the best possible fruit, so there is a lot of work in the vineyard and a lot of adapting vineyard husbandry in the light of global warming. For example, using grass cover crops, no plowing and raising canopies. I try to avoid excessively ripe grapes, and as we yield low, they tend to ripen fast. Therefore, we pick early. I like to vinify grapes just at the good moment of maturity, and in 2022, that was on August 28. I want to show the terroir and respect the fruit as much as possible. Sometimes, I use whole bunch [which his parents eschewed] and have stopped doing a cold soak. But the aim is to have whole berries as long as possible. We do not cold soak, so we use pied de cuves to start the fermentation. I use mainly pump-overs to make sure that the fermentation starts well, and when we reach a high temperature, then do a few punch-downs.”

These wines tended to “step on the gas” a little too hard a decade ago. Louis Confuron, like many of his contemporaries, has just tweaked the formula to engender less bullish, demonstrative wines and fashion more elegant ones. The entry-level wines are certainly worth examining, especially the Côte de Nuits-Villages La Montagne.