1997 Dominique Laurent Nuits-St.-Georges La Richemone

Dominique Laurent is a former pastry chef who started a small negociant business in Nuits-Saint-Georges, in Burgundy’s Cote d’Or, in the late 1980s. He produced his first vintages a few years later, and quickly developed a reputation for making very small quantities of excellent wine sourced from old vineyards. In 2006 Laurent made the leap from negociant to grower with the purchase of a few acres of vineyards. Today Domaine Laurent Pere et Fils owns 23 acres in Nuits-Saint-Georges. He is known for his extreme approach to “hands-off” winemaking, and for his habit of sometimes using “200% new oak,” meaning that one cuvee is sometimes transferred twice to new oak barrels. About 30,000 bottles are produced annually and his wines have earned cult status with some Burgundy collectors.

La Richemone is a 5-acre Premier Cru vineyard vineyard in the Nuits-Saint-Georges appellation, in Burgundy’s Cote-de-Nuits. It is near the northern boundary of Nuits-Saints-Georges, at an average elevation of 270 meters. The soil is limestone, clay and sand. Some wine writers note that the wines from these northern Nuits-Saint-Georges vineyards have a hint of Vosne about them, since they are so close to the Vosne-Romanee appellation. Because there are no Grand Cru vineyards in Nuits-Saints-Georges, the appellation’s considerable reputation rests on its excellent Premier Crus.

This red wine is relatively light and can pair with a wide variety of foods. The grape prefers cooler climates and the wine is most often associated with Burgundy, Champagne and the U.S. west coast. Regional differences make it nearly as fickle as it is flexible.