Domaine Pierre Girardin Griotte-Chambertin Grand Cru

Pierre-Vincent Girardin launched his domaine in 2016 at roughly nineteen years old — and chose 2021, the frost year that gutted Burgundy yields, to make a permanent technical commitment: 100% whole-cluster vinification across all his reds, a deliberate shift toward stem tannin structure and aromatic lift that redefines his Côte de Nuits cuvées from this vintage forward. Griotte-Chambertin sits at the southern tip of the Chambertin cluster in Gevrey-Chambertin, its soils a shallow iron-rich red clay over Jurassic limestone — the ferrous, tight-grained terroir that gives the climat its characteristic savory depth and harder mineral edge compared to the broader, more silken Chambertin itself. Girardin's cellar protocol is deliberately cold to lock in juice purity; little to no pigeage is applied, preserving whole-berry integrity through fermentation. The wine ages 15 months in standard 228-litre Burgundy barrique at low new-oak percentage, then three months in tank before bottling — a regime calibrated to integrate stem tannin without adding wood weight. What no peer at this address routinely does: Girardin bottles unfined and unfiltered, timed to the lunar calendar, leaving the wine's iron-mineral texture and native microbial complexity fully intact. The 2021 vintage's severe frost compression means this parcel produced a fraction of normal volume, concentrating the red-clay extract and savory reduction character that defines Griotte at its most site-specific.