2023 Domaine Henri et Didier Delagrange Meursault

The Delagranges have been tending vines on the slopes of Volnay since the 1600s. The modern domaine took shape in 1978, when Henri Delagrange and Gisèle Verdereau put their six hectares together, nearly all of it in Volnay and Pommard. Their son Didier joined after his viticulture studies and later took over with his wife Hélène, and over the next few decades they grew the estate to around 15 hectares across Volnay, Pommard, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, Aloxe-Corton and the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune, with six hectares still in Volnay itself and a cuverie at the bottom of the village. Didier's son Alexei is the seventh generation. He's been at the domaine since 2017, has made the wines since the 2022 vintage, and keeps a cover crop on the ground all winter, ploughs rather than sprays, de-buds to hold yields down, defoliates and picks everything by hand. The flagship is the Volnay Vieilles Vignes, from vines between 80 and 100 years old, and the premier crus sit on three of the village's best-known slopes: Clos des Chênes, Champans and Santenots, with a Pommard Les Bertins alongside. The cellar work is restrained, with the aim of wines that smell precisely of where they come from, and the house style runs lacy and perfumed in Volnay, fuller and firmer a few hundred meters down the hill in Pommard.