2022 Bourgogne Les Grand Corvées

Sébastien Caillat has become the very reluctant superstar of Chassagne. He genuinely loathes the speculation surrounding his wines' very limited production. While others seem to pursue their “pop idol” status, Caillat just wants people to enjoy his wines and shies away from the limelight. “I started picking on August 24 with the Grande Montagne, which for the first time was picked on a different day to the La Romanée,” he tells me, pouring from his unique glass containers that look as if they were stolen from a science laboratory. “The ripeness in Grande Montagne seemed to come earlier, so the La Romanée was picked four days later. It was a very warm season. I expected that the wines would be “fatter” than the 2020s, but it doesn’t seem that way at the moment. The balance is quite surprising. It wasn’t a difficult vintage – no bad memories. The fermentation went slowly with nothing that made me stressed. Unlike the 2020s, there was no blockage in vine maturity as we had more rain in June, so the vines were in good health. In 2020, the lack of rain in May and June meant that you could see vines suffering on the slope. The 2022s were transferred from barrel into tank after 12 months, and they will be bottled a couple of weeks before the next harvest.” I don’t need to add to the hype. These are brilliant wines, containing extraordinary poise and mineralité, but be warned, they do deserve bottle age, as evinced by a 2014 Chassagne La Romanée that I drank a couple of days later and decanted.