Marsannay "L'Ancestrale"

When Sylvain Pataille — a trained oenologist who consults for roughly fifteen to twenty Burgundy domaines — founded his estate in 1999 on entirely leased land, he reserved the name L'Ancestrale for a single purpose: a blend drawn in equal thirds from his oldest Pinot Noir vines, aged sixty to eighty years, across Clos du Roy, En Clémengeots, and Les Ouzeloy. The decision to blend rather than bottle each site separately is a deliberate inversion of his own single-lieu-dit philosophy — the argument being that vine age, not site specificity, is the defining variable here.

Clos du Roy sits at 270 m on thin reddish topsoil over Comblanchien limestone with iron-rich marl; En Clémengeots contributes very shallow gravel over laves stone, the highest-minerality parcel in the portfolio. Together they impose a structural tension that old-vine concentration alone would not produce.

Vinification uses a high proportion of whole clusters, fermented with indigenous yeast in fibreglass vats under a long, gentle infusion maceration — extraction is explicitly avoided. Élevage runs 24 months in oak at 15–30% new barrique, longer than the domaine's standard 15–18 months, with no sulphur added until bottling. The wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered.

In 2022 — a very warm, early-harvest vintage — the whole-cluster approach was critical: it preserved aromatic lift and freshness against the vintage's ripe, generous fruit profile, preventing the density from reading as heaviness. Drink from 2026 through 2034.