About 100 metres apart, there are two very different versions of Vosne-Romanee laid out upon the RN74. The spotless winery of Charles Lachaux, projecting plenty of ‘quiet luxury’ and the homely one of the Vigot family, that you suspect, has barely changed in the last twenty years. Whilst for good or bad, everyone is aware of million pound / yen / euro bottles of Bourgogne Rouge made by the new Arnoux regime, less is known about the quiet and incremental progress of the wines by Domaine Fabrice Vigot. I have only visited the Arnoux winery once, whilst it was in a transitionary stage, but you could see what Charles was trying to do – push everything to the max in the pursuit of the highest standards of viticulture and expression in the cellar. On the basis of this goal, you must say he’s succeeded.
Yet to me, it’s all a bit much, the wines were not very lovable or charming, more like sitting on a modernist chair, that looks great in an interior magazine, but has a hard bit of wood where you want to put your derriere. I got the vibe that the old-school importer who I was with was looking around rather tentatively at all the new oak and expensive lighting and thinking – and how much more are these wines going to cost this year? At what price 5 extra points from the wine critics?
Leaving the Lachaux winery, you can stroll a few meters down the road, past the Hotel Richebourg and it’s a bit like going back in time to Burgundy in the 1990s. No sculptures or clay eggs, just a warm smile and a great collection of wines for extremely fair prices. The Domaine is not an ancient concern, it only dates back to 1990 when the newly married Fabrice & Christine decided to, in all senses, throw their lots in together. Fabrice inherited relationships from his father with the Mugneret-Gibourg family, where he, like his dad, managed and farmed many of their vineyards under a metayage agreement. His wife Christine brought some prime family vineyards from Gevrey.
Christine from a visit in Dec 2023
That the Mugneret-Gibourg wines are some of the greatest in Burgundy is not disputed. But prices? Like Charles Lachaux, not so great – So what’s to lose in investigating the lovely wines from the family that did much of their farming over the last 40 years. The metayage agreement with the sisters came to an end in 2016 after nearly 60 years – The pay-off was just too small for the massive amounts of work they were having to put in – So from 2017 onward all their wines are from their own Domaine.
They have some great vineyards, Damaudes – above Malconsorts and abutting La Tache, Chalandins and Les Eletois, just below Griotte-Chambertin, among others. All the wines, from the Gevrey to the Nuits, have been filtered through a Vosne lens, with plenty of spice and fine tannin, but mostly built on the same floral and feminine character that you see in the wines of the Mugneret-Gibourgs.
There has been a lot of progress in vineyard management also – and work now on biodynamic principles, Christine tells me is having really good results to mitigate the stresses caused be the changing climactic conditions.
With only 2.5 hectares much of their production is sold to private clients and a substantial amount goes to Japan.
Keith Levenberg, one of my very favourite writers notes: “These wines easily transcend village-wine status. The fruit is vibrantly toned, almost has the energy of a Beaujolais but with darker, earthier tones on account of the gingerbread and cinnamon-spice mix which screams Vosne-Romanee in personality”.
Anthony Hanson M.W calls then: “A little-known gem of Vosne-Romanée”