Nuits-Saint-Georges Bas de Combe Vieilles Vignes 2022

Village. Bas de Combe, Nuits-Saint-Georges. Pinot Noir from 0.45 ha, bought in 1989. Planted in 1937, 89 years old this year; only the 1929 third of Les Athets is older. Guyot simple. Clay-limestone. Frequent millerandage: the old vines set small, seedless, uneven berries, which concentrates the fruit and keeps yields low on their own. Yield about 33 hl/ha. Sixteen months in barrel, a quarter new.

Nuits-Saint-Georges is a long appellation split in two by the town. South of the town the wines are the famous Nuits: dense, tannic, slow, Les Saint-Georges, Vaucrains, Cailles. North of the town the vineyards run up to the Vosne line and the wines turn softer and more perfumed, and the premiers crus there, Boudots, Aux Murgers, Aux Cras, are often called Vosne in all but name. Bas de Combe is the last village lieu-dit on that northern edge, at the foot of the combe below Aux Boudots, with Les Chaumes on one side and Les Réas on the other, a few hundred meters down the slope from La Tâche. Across the commune line the same ground would be Vosne-Romanée.

Aux Boudots, the premier cru directly above this parcel, was one of the Camuzet vines Victor and then Jean farmed on shares from 1945 until Méo-Camuzet took them back in 2007. Bas de Combe, bought by Jean in 1989, is the piece of that hillside the family kept. Nuits by the map, Vosne by the glass: tasters have said so every year, “more Vosne than the Vosne,” “more premier cru than village.”

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 sixteen months in barrel on the fine lees under CO₂, sulfur added late, racked once before bottling.