2022 Volnay Clos de Verseuil 1er Cru

Twelve months ago, I inspected the building site Thibaud Clerget hoped would turn into a new first-floor tasting room. Well, that’s now complete: a spacious, chichi space with sofas, a walk-in cool-room to house back vintages and a large table for tasting. That’s not the big news. No, the headline is that in July 2022, Clerget bought Domaine Regis Rossignol-Changarnier and its eight hectares of vine. These were split with fellow winemaker Arnaud Baillot, though as Clerget put the deal together, he essentially got first dibs on which vineyards he wanted to add to his Pommard/Volnay-focused portfolio. Each ended up with four hectares. Apropos the 2022s, note that Clerget was advising Rossignol-Changarnier’s chef de culture on how to farm the vines before the acquisition. Hence, it isn’t a case of having zero control of viticulture before the deal went through. Clerget said he now has ten hectares, which is a sufficient size.

“It was a much easier growing season,” he continues. “I just needed to do six or seven treatments in the vines with just a little coulure, so the bunches were not too densely clustered. We had 100mm of rain at the end of June. I started the harvest on August 25 in the Clos du Verseuil and finished on September 8. I didn’t make much wine, just 35hL/ha for the reds and 45hL/ha for the whites. I did only pump-overs for the extraction with no pumping down - infusion, really. I used some whole bunch on the reds, depending on the vineyard. I like the 2022 vintage as we have balance and freshness. The reds had been racked three or four weeks earlier to spend the second year in tank, and they will be bottled in March and April without filtration.”

This is a fine set of wines from Clerget, capped by strong showings of his Volnay Les Caillerets and Pommard Les Rugiens, both eclipsing the Clos de Vougeot that I felt showed a little too much stem influence (maybe 30% would have worked better than 50%). Clerget has been using WineGlobes for a couple of vintages now and experimented with a cuvée completely matured in the glass containers – his debut Volnay Clos des Angles. As I remarked to Clerget, I am unconvinced that they offer a viable alternative to oak barrels. Indeed, I feel he thinks the same way and mentioned that for 2023, that cuvée combines WineGlobe and oak barrel.