2021 Volnay 1er Cru 'Les Santenots', Domaine Georges Joillot

Six bottles available. Sixty-five-year-old vines.

The Santenots quirk, which is the best thing about this wine

The Santenots vineyards are not in Volnay. They sit in the commune of Meursault, just across the boundary. But Volnay is the great name for red and Meursault the great name for white, so the law follows the reputation: red wine grown in Santenots is legally Volnay Premier Cru, and white wine grown on the very same rows is Meursault Premier Cru. Change the grape and you change the appellation without moving an inch. It is one of the genuine oddities of the Côte de Beaune and it has been that way for generations.

The producer

Domaine Georges Joillot sits in Pommard, next door to the Château, and was founded in 1929. If you have bought from them before you may know them as Domaine Jean-Luc Joillot; the name changed in 2019 when Jeanne Joillot, great-granddaughter of the founder, took over with her step-brother Simon Goutard and her husband Grégoire Guidot, renaming the estate for her grandfather. Fourteen hectares, worked with grass cover and ploughing, hand-harvested into small perforated crates.

How it is made

Completely destemmed. Open-top fermentation over ten to twenty days with deliberately restrained extraction. Fourteen months in barrel, 25% new. Bottled unfiltered. That is a light hand for a Premier Cru and it suits a vintage like this one.

The 2021 vintage, honestly

A brutal year. Frost on the sixth, seventh and eighth of April took temperatures to minus eight, and Burgundy lost between half and four-fifths of the crop; reds came in at 30 to 50% of a normal year. A wet summer brought mildew and oidium at levels nobody had seen since 2004. Harvest ran a month later than 2020.

What came out the other side is a genuinely classical vintage: pale, light-bodied, high-acid, elegant Pinot Noir at 13 to 13.5%, after a run of hot solar years. It is not a vintage for anyone who wants density. It is an excellent one for anyone who wants lift, transparency and drinkability. And old vines on a well-drained Premier Cru site are precisely the assets that carried 2021.

The details

• Producer: Domaine Georges Joillot, Pommard (formerly Domaine Jean-Luc Joillot)
• Appellation: Volnay 1er Cru
• Climat: Les Santenots, in the commune of Meursault
• Vintage: 2021
• Grape: 100% Pinot Noir, vines around 65 years old
• Soil: clay-limestone, south to south-east facing
• Ageing: 14 months in barrel, 25% new, bottled unfiltered
• Format: 750ml
• Drinking window: 2026 to 2036, per the domaine

No critic score has been published for the 2021. Jasper Morris and Andy Horwood MW have reviewed later vintages of this exact wine; those scores belong to those vintages and we are not moving them here.

Serving and pairing

Decant forty-five minutes ahead and serve at 58 to 60°F, cooler than you would a Corton. Roast chicken, duck breast, salmon, mushrooms. A 2021 rewards a cooler glass than a hot-vintage red.

Six bottles, shipped from our Florida cellar in protective packaging. Browse more Burgundy.