2022 Nuits Saint-Georges Les Cailles 1er Cru

Domaine Robert Chevillon inadvertently fell through the cracks of my schedule last year, so I returned to a Nuits Saint-Georges producer I have followed and visited for nearly two decades. Denis Chevillon took me down to the barrel cellar, apologizing for the lack of an upturned empty barrel upon which I usually place my laptop. “All my barrels are full after the 2022 and 2023 vintages,” he explained before we used the barrel lift as a makeshift “desk” (perfect, since it could be adjusted to my exact height, unlike a barrel.) Chevillon explained how he suffered localized hail damage in a band that whipped through Les Roncières and Pruliers. Fortunately, damaged berries dried and fell to the ground, so Chevillon did not have to sort them out at harvest, which this year ran from September 1 to 8. As is tradition, everything is fully de-stemmed, and the Premier Crus are all aged in 30% new oak for bottling next spring. Chevillon’s style has always erred toward more fruit-driven, slightly riper Nuits Saint-Georges from his enviable range of cuvées from its most propitious sites. Maybe, on occasion, the sucrosity was a little too much and occluded the terroir expression. These wines are not going to your first port-of-call for transparency or Pinoté, though that does come through in some of his cuvées, not least his outstanding Les Vaucrains, which I often rank above his Les Saint-Georges.