Côte de Nuits "Vignoy" 2023

A dry Burgundy in the signature style of Jérôme Galeyrand: precise, refined, elegant. His wines speak quietly yet compellingly; they rely on aroma and drinkability rather than fullness, and they taste of soil and origin, not of cellar and technique.

Domaine Jérôme Galeyrand is based in Saint-Philibert, east of Gevrey-Chambertin, with the barrel cellar right in the village. The estate farms 5.25 hectares across sites in the Côte de Nuits, from Marsannay through Fixin to Gevrey-Chambertin. Galeyrand farms 70 percent of the vineyards organically and 30 percent according to sustainable principles. Pesticides are excluded, and every vine row is ploughed mechanically rather than treated chemically. Harvest is done by hand, with a team of well-trained friends: a family business without a family.

Galeyrand's credo is to work fresh grape juice without technological or oenological processes. That means: no industrial yeasts, no fining agents, no enzymes, little sulfur. Depending on the cuvée and vintage, he vinifies either fully destemmed or with whole clusters, whichever the character of the wine calls for. Ageing takes place in oak barrels from French forests, with a deliberately low proportion of new wood, so the oak doesn't mask the fruit.

Galeyrand arrived in Burgundy without a winemaking family behind him; he spent eight years in the cheese trade, helped with the harvest in Gevrey-Chambertin from 1996, and bought his first parcel of 0.05 hectares in 2002. In 2020 he was awarded a star in the Guide des Meilleurs Vins de France. Production remains modest: depending on the vintage, around 2,000 cases, roughly 24,000 bottles.