Nathalie Richez "Petites Combes" Bourgogne Côte Chalonnaise Rouge, Burgundy, France 2022

FROM ROSENTHAL:

THE WINE: 100% Pinot Noir. Nathalie owns a 0.5-hectare parcel of early-1980s-planted Pinot Noir in the village of Fontaines, bordering Mercurey’s northeast corner and abutting the well-known premier cru Clos des Myglands (a monopole of Domaine Faiveley). Her just-so touch with extraction is evident here, as this is breezy without being slight, presenting its pretty Pinot fruit with tenderness yet also possessing enough depth and structure to tie the earth-kissed flavors into a nice clean package. This spends 18 months in 20% new oak.

THE PRODUCER: Nathalie’s home is the little town of Chagny, on the border of the Côte de Beaune and the Côte Chalonnaise; she vinifies her wines in a spartan room adjacent to her house, in steel and fiberglass tanks, and her barrel cellar is a couple of gravel-floored chambers beneath an old stone shed in the backyard. Except for the Aligoté for the Bouzeron, all her wines, from humblest to grandest, pass 18 months in 20% new oak—low-toast barrels from a tiny local one-man operation. She destems everything fully, allows fermentations to proceed spontaneously, and only applies sulfur after malolactic is complete—an utterly nonradical regimen that well serves her wines’ sense of classicism. She works without chemical herbicides in the vineyards and regularly aerates the soil, but she chooses not to adapt a “practicing organic” label, as she wants to retain the flexibility to employ her best judgment in every situation.