Winemaker Notes
The Clos du Roy has enjoyed a kingly reputation ever since the dukes of Burgundy, residing in nearby Dijon, sang, documented, and drank in its virtues. A gentle slope with rich clay and limestone soil and perfect exposition, it is one of Burgundy’s better-kept secrets. Bouvier fashions a red from his parcel here that is at once serious and gay, generous and firm, bold and elegant.
This full-bodied wine has the stuffing and structure to stand up to wild game, along with the freshness and vitality to pair it with much lighter fare.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Perfumed, this red delivers aromas of eastern spices, dried rose, cherry, strawberry and licorice. Layered and silky, with fine harmony and a lingering aftertaste of spice, floral and fruit accents. Best from 2025
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Wine & Spirits
Bouvier grows this broad, rich white at the northern limits of the Côte de Nuits, a vineyard on the hill above the town of Chenove, abutting the city limits of Dijon. His parcel is at the top of the vineyard, on oolitic limestone. The wine delivers flavors of lemon curd, salt and tart apple, its gentle sweetness narrowed by taut, leesy tannins and tense acidity. Decant it for roast fish in a cream sauce.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Perched up in the northernmost position in the Côte de Nuits, Marsannay is the only appellation village of Burgundy to produce classified wines of all three colors: red, white— and rosé. The official Rosé de Marsannay earned its high reputation in the early 1900s.
Its reds, made of Pinot Noir, burst with red and black fruit and are consistently long on the palate. Chardonnays from Marsannay are charming, floral and full of citrus fruit and mineral. Top Marsannay vineyards include Clos du Roy and Les Longeroies.