Echézeaux Grand Cru Les Treux Vieilles Vignes 2022

Grand Cru. Les Treux, Echézeaux, on Flagey-Echézeaux land. Pinot Noir from 0.34 ha, the domaine’s only grand cru. Planted in 1937, the same year as Bas de Combe, 89 years old this year. Guyot simple, rows east to west on ground with little or no slope, clay-limestone with the deeper clay of the flat sector, about 33 hl/ha. The 2016 frost took four fifths of the crop here. Eighteen months in barrel, all new.

Echézeaux is the biggest grand cru of the Côte de Nuits after Clos de Vougeot, about 37 ha, and it’s really eleven climats stitched together, from the steep upper slope under the forest down to the flat land against the Clos de Vougeot wall. Quality and style vary with where you are. Les Treux is in the lower, flatter part, right beside Grands Echézeaux, the smaller and more prized grand cru that sits between Echézeaux and the Clos. The ground here is deeper and more clay-rich than the upper climats, which gives body and tannin rather than the airy perfume of the hillside sectors. Guillaume says it himself: the tannins are always more forward in this site than in any of his others, and since 2015 he has been aiming for more elegance because they can be “a little masculine.” That’s why it gets all new oak and the longest élevage: the barrel is doing the softening. The Tardy family story starts a few hundred meters from here: Victor Tardy’s share-farmed Camuzet vines included Clos de Vougeot Grands Maupertuis, just over the wall.

Fully de-stemmed with two thirds of the berries kept whole, a week cold before fermentation starts on its own, warmed slowly with few punch-downs. Aged eighteen months in new barrels on the fine lees under CO₂, sulfur added late, racked once before bottling.