"89-91 Points, Allen Meadows, Burghound.com
Sweetspot - Outstanding Top value
A brooding nose grudgingly offers up notes of dark pinot fruit that is cut with ample amounts of earth and humus. The medium-bodied flavors possess even better richness and power though at the expense of minerality and refinement, all wrapped in an attractively textured and sappy mouth coating finish. This is qualitatively equal to the Fussière but notably different."
Allen Meadows, Burghound.com
Brothers Marc and Alex Bachelet have taken the area under production from 6 ha in 2005 to an impressive 22 ha today that is spread over approximately 20 appellations that produce approximately 100,000 bottles annually evenly split between red and white. The genesis of the domaine was created by grandfather Bernard Bachelet, who was based in Chassagne and was succeeded by his son Jean-François. The brothers explained that their approach is 'non-certified organic', meaning that they employ the most natural treatments that they can without being inflexible if another solution is required. The vineyards are plowed with no herbicides, insecticides or anti-rot treatments used. The vines are maintained solely by repiquage, the process of replacing individual vines rather than wholesale grubbing up, this serves to preserve a high average vine age. At the harvest the fruit is sorted twice, once in the vineyard and again at the cuverie. The whites are pressed, and the must is allowed to oxidize as completely as is reasonably possible to avoid problems later. The must is then transferred to 350 liter barrels where the fermentations commence using only natural yeasts and there is no lees stirring during the 18 months élevage period, which is divided between 12 months in barrel and 6 in tank. Before the bottling, the wines are both fined and filtered and dosed with 30 to 35 ppm of SO2. The reds see very few punch downs using no enzymes or acidification. Before the new wines are transferred to barrel the idea is to preserve as much of the lees as possible. They note however that the trick isn't so much to obtain a large quantity of lees but rather lees that are completely clean. The wines see the same 18-month élevage period as the whites with the same division between barrel and tank.
