Morey-Saint-Denis 1er Cru "Vieilles Vignes" AOC 2023 1500ml Magnum

A Pinot Noir of cool precision: fine stature, built for length and clarity. The old vines provide concentration, while the fine-grained tannin keeps the wine taut without adding weight.

Morey-Saint-Denis, Côte de Nuits. The Lignier family has farmed Pinot Noir here since the 1880s: Jacques Lignier bought plots that phylloxera had devalued, and his son Jules patiently replanted them. Hubert Lignier took over in 1959 and, from 1973, began bottling his wines himself rather than selling them in bulk. Today Laurent Lignier runs the domaine in the fifth generation, on the same land. The estate's plant material traces back to a selection that Henri Lignier propagated vine by vine in the 1960s from vines of the 1955 vintage.

Pure Pinot Noir, from old vines prone to millerandage that bear tiny, often seedless berries. Long, cool macerations precede fermentation; the proportion of whole clusters has grown over the years, and new oak is deliberately kept low and spread across four cooperages so that no single barrel marks the wine. The cellar in Morey-Saint-Denis, acquired in 2008, operates entirely by gravity.

Dry, at 14.5% vol., with cool red fruit: morello cherry, raspberry, redcurrant, alongside violet and herbal spice. The freshness carries through, the tannin stays fine-grained, and the finish is long and clear. In magnum, the wine ages more slowly.

Large format of 1500 ml, bottled by Domaine Hubert Lignier in Morey-Saint-Denis. Since 2007 the estate has worked without synthetic products in the vineyards, and since 2010 Laurent Lignier has farmed and vinified here according to his own style.