Nuits-Saint-Georges “Le Coteau des Bois” 2021 – Jean-Claude Boisset

The grapes to produce the Nuits-Saint-Georges “Le Coteau des Bois” Jean-Claude Boisset were harvested into small crates, then carefully sorted at the winery. The grapes were 100% destemmed but not crushed, and gravity-fed into stainless steel tanks. Fermentation took place using only indigenous yeasts and lasted for 21 days, with gentle pigeage to extract colour. The wine was aged for 18 months in French oak barrels, 35% new. It was lightly filtered before it was bottled.

Halfway between Dijon and Beaune and with an easterly exposure, the vineyards of Nuits-Saint-Georges cover six kilometres, with 160 hectares of Village-appellation vines. The range of soils, exposure and locations here creates a great diversity of sites. This vineyard, ‘Coteau des Bois’ is located on the slopes of Nuit-Saint-Georges, which you can see from the roof of Jean-Claude Boisset’s winery. As the name suggests, the vines are on the hillside adjacent to a small forest, ‘Bois de Charmois’. Gregory only uses the fruit from the top part of the slope in order to achieve a wine with great freshness. The vines are planted on clay and silt soils and have an easterly exposure.

Jean-Claude Boisset is a family-owned wine company founded in 1961. Jean-Claude’s first parcel of land was located in Gevrey-Chambertin and today the company is based in Les Ursulines, a former convent in Nuits-Saint-Georges, and run by his children Jean-Charles and Nathalie. In 2018, they opened a new state-of-the-art winery, which reflects their modern, technical approach to winemaking. In 2002, Jean-Charles recruited Grégory Patriat, who had previously worked at the legendary Vosne-Romanée producer Domaine Leroy, to revitalise and reinvent the house. He transformed Boisset into a ‘viniculteur’, working closely with the growers, guiding the wines from vine to bottle to achieve the desired quality. In order to create concentrated, beautifully well-rounded wines which are naturally expressive of their individual appellation, Grégory practises minimal intervention winemaking. Each plot is picked separately and hand sorted to ensure optimal maturity. Sulphite levels are low and the wines are fermented exclusively by natural yeasts, with rarely more than 30% new oak used on a wine.