Domaine Georges Noellat Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes

When Maxime Cheurlin took his first vintage in 2010 at age twenty, the entire domaine's production had been sold in bulk to Jadot and Drouhin for two decades — meaning every bottle bearing the Noëllat label today is the work of a single young winemaker rebuilding a dormant estate from scratch, armed with pre-WWII vines and a cousin's surname that connects him directly to the Jayer lineage. The Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes draws from the northern Côte de Nuits, where classic argilo-calcaire soils — clay retaining concentration, limestone delivering drainage and aromatic lift — underpin vines old enough to self-regulate yield without intervention. Viticulture is lutte raisonnée, hand-worked, with no insecticides or chemical fertilisers. In the cellar, grapes are 100% destemmed, cold-soaked for several days, then fermented with indigenous yeasts only under Cheurlin's signature 'infusion' protocol — punch-downs rare and deliberately gentle. Aging runs 14–20 months in French oak at approximately 30% new for village-level fruit; the cellar is actively cooled to delay and slow malolactic fermentation, a technique Cheurlin adopted from around 2017 that critics including Allen Meadows credit with adding precision. The wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered. The 2021 vintage — frost-reduced and limited in volume — delivers focused, precise fruit with the characteristic Noëllat lacy structure rather than the opulence of 2019 or 2020, rewarding patience.