Our producer: Domaine Chanterêves
It is not necessarily the rare premier and grand cru sites that make Burgundy so exciting today, but many more wines from the lesser-known appellations. Because it is precisely these wines that develop in the hands of a few highly talented young winegrowers to an unprecedented top quality. So if you do without sonorous names, then Burgundy is now a real treasure trove for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay made by hand with a clear terroir imprint and with a great price-benefit ratio.
Every winegrower who deals with the grape varieties Pinot Noir and Chardonnay knows: The be-all and end-all are old clones that were deliberately refined for low yields and thus for the highest quality. In Burgundy, these vines are not only at home, but also present in a great genetic diversity and partly in the biblical age of 60 or 100 years. Such vines are not only to be found in the renowned Premier and Grand Cru locations, there are still real treasures to be discovered on the Côte de Beaune in particular.
Tomoko Kuriyama founded Chanterêves in 2010 with her husband Guillaume Bott. Tomoko comes from Japan, her grandmother was a cooking teacher and had her own cooking show on Japanese television, her father was a big lover of Burgundy, so she was born with wine, so to speak. In addition to studying oenology in Geisenheim, she worked with Paul Fürst, Peter Jakob Kühn and Georg Breuer, among others.
Guillaume grew up in Beaune, in the heart of Burgundy so to speak, where he attended the Lycée Viticole. His first job took him to Gérard Boudot from Domaine Etienne Sauzet in Puligny-Montrachet. During his seven years at Sauzet, Guillaume gained important experience in the vinification of Chardonnay. In 2002 he finally moved to Domaine Simon Bize et Fils in Savigny-les-Beaune to assist Patrick Bize. Guillaume and Tomoko met here in 2005 when she joined Simon Bize as a harvest intern.
Since the two started from scratch and therefore did not own their own vines, they deliberately looked for vineyard plots that may not be as well-known, but have a special terroir and, as mentioned above, have particularly exciting vines. They found what they were looking for in the municipalities of Saint Romain, Auxey-Duresses, PernandVergelesses and Ladoix, among others. Based on this, the two have deliberately built up their domain and have thus gained an excellent international reputation in recent years.
It would be presumptuous to compare their wines with the renowned Grand Crus from the Côte de Nuits or from Puligny-Montrachet. The terroir of Saint Romain or Ladoix is ??completely different, the special quality of the vines, but also the effort and meticulousness with which Tomoko and Guillaume cultivate them and vinify their wines from them, which differs in no way from the renowned top domains . For this reason, the two elicit wines from their vineyards that were previously not thought possible here. Their supposedly simple Bourgogne Blanc is anything but simple and the best example of the outstanding work of the two.
