2023 Bitouzet-Prieur Meursault 1er Cru "Les Charmes"

Professional Reviews

Notes

A Volnay family and a Meursault family walk into a bar, and forty years later their son is pouring Volnay Taillepieds and Meursault Perrières out of the same cellar. That’s Bitouzet-Prieur in a nutshell Vincent Bitouzet, whose family has been in Volnay since the 1860s and were among the first in the village to bottle their own wine, married Annie Prieur of Meursault, and the two inheritances became one domaine with a red cellar in Volnay (next door to the Lafarges, who are distant cousins) and a white cellar in Meursault. Their son François joined in 2005 and has run the domaine since 2012. The 13 or so hectares split roughly 60/40 red to white, with six Volnay premier crus including Taillepieds, Caillerets and Clos des Chênes, and a run of Meursault that reaches Perrières and Charmes. Vincent stopped using herbicides in the early 1990s, farming is organic, harvest is by hand, and the yeasts are native. The reds are fully destemmed and raised in mostly used barrels, and the whites see no more than a fifth new oak, which is why they come out tense and chiseled rather than heavy, more lemon and stone than butter and richness.