Domaine Ghislaine Barthod Chambolle-Musigny 1er ‘Noirots’ 2017

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

About Domaine Ghislaine Barthod

Ghislaine Barthod’s domaine originates back to the 1920s when it was owned by Marcel Noëllat. His daughter married Gaston Barthod, a soldier stationed in Dijon who visited the winery to buy some wine and consequently fell in love with the girl who sold it to him.

Gaston gave up military life for a new life amongst the vineyards in 1960. His daughter, Ghislaine, and her partner Louis Boillot bought their current premises overlooking Premier Cru Les Feusselottes in 1986. Though they share the team who work the vineyards for both, the vinification and commercial aspects of each business is kept completely separate. Ghislaine’s father Gaston died in 1999, yet effectively Ghislaine had been making his wine for a decade prior to his passing.

Since 1999, the high quality produced by Ghislaine Barthod has ensured a powerful following amongst Burgundy enthusiasts in the know. The style is unashamedly intense, with both the perfume and sensuality that has made Chambolle such an iconic commune but also the density and structure to age (an attribute that Ghislaine strives for).

Ghislaine Barthod’s wines balance the natural elegance of Chambolle with sensual depth, structure and longevity. Many, if not all the wines at this address manage to blur the hierarchy.

The overall effect of tasting at the domaine is to come away with a palate coated in sensual Chambolle fruit. Ghislaine Barthod’s wines are always supremely elegant and harmonious and display admirable concentration and length. The best examples can age gracefully for up to 20 years.

Anyone who doubts the reality of terroir need only taste their way through the range of Ghislaine Barthod wines each year to be converted. While the Domaine is small with just under six hectares of vineyards (one of the reasons it flies under the radar) it includes a remarkable nine Chambolle-Musigny Premier Crus. These are all made exactly the same way, and yet, they all have very different personalities from each other: personalities that express themselves year in and year out, irrespective of the climatic conditions. That said, these Burgundies are not simply subjects for terroir voyeurism—they are just far too delicious for that. To quote Terry Theise, “…that would be like ignoring the rainbow so you can balance your chequebook.”

Ghislaine’s son, Clément Boillot is now heavily involved in the running of the Domaine, along with his father’s Domaine Louis Boillot and their operations in Beaujolais, Louis Boillot-Barthod. They say the apple never falls far from the tree, and from what we have seen—even by this Domaine’s lofty standards—the quality of Clément’s first releases has been astonishing. In the cellar, Clément is running trials with amphora and foudre and is in the early stages of introducing biodynamic viticulture. We know from discussions with Clément (and from what his mother has told us about him) that he is likely to be a wonderful manager of this Domaine in the future. He has the drive of the true vigneron: emphasising the vineyard over the cellar. What a legacy he is inheriting!

I have now tasted more wines from Clement, and it seems like there are two tendencies. Firstly, the style has been lightened a bit … not much … but enough to increase the delicacy and the transparency of the wines. In times of increasing global warming its always welcome to make lighter and more transparent wine.

The second tendency is that the Boillot wines are slowly but surely getting integrated into Clement’s style of wine, hence also the Ghislaine Barthod style. Actually, there is not really a big difference anymore… and I think it’s safe to say you should consider to buy some Louis Boillot wines also …

Winehog

In the Vineyard

The estate is made up of just under 6 hectares (15 acres) of vineyards. Over half of this is split between eight well-sited plots in Chambolle-Musigny premier cru vineyards, with the remaining land in Villages-level and AOC Bourgogne parcels.

In the Winery

Restricted crop and meticulous attention to élevage are the ‘simple’ keys to Ghislaine’s success. Her straightforward, no-nonsense approach helped introduce a sorting table to discard any grapes that were not up to scratch. Along with this; a gentle cool pre-maceration before fermentation is used to extract all the fruit’s freshness and flavours; only natural yeasts are used; the grapes are destemmed, allowed a brief cool soak before being fermented naturally in open-top wooden cuvees with more punching down than pumping over. The wines are then matured in barriques (roughly a quarter of which are new). The wines are usually bottled after 18 months, after one racking.

The 2017 Vintage at Domaine Ghislaine Barthod

Ghislaine Barthod picked early, beginning on September 2, and she has produced one of the most successful 2017 portfolios to be found in the Côte de Nuits. It would be difficult to overstate my admiration for this small, 5.86-hectare domaine, a source of deep and intense but beautifully transparent wines that are invariably strikingly defined by site. While the quality of Barthod’s wines is well known, I can’t help thinking that were she to possess a parcel of Les Amoureuses (“my dream,” she says) or Musigny, these bottlings would be still more ardently pursued. Readers able to source a few bottles certainly shouldn’t hesitate.

Winemaking here is simple: destemmed and whole cluster grapes are layered in the fermentation tanks and vinified with ambient yeasts; macerations are classic, with pumping over and punching down; and after pressing, the wines mature in barrels, some 20-25% of which are new—principally from Tonnelleries Rémond and François Frères—for some twenty months. Barthod fans will be interested to note that in 2017, at the instigation of her son, Clément, Barthod elected to vinify apart two small parcels of premier cru that have been habitually blended into the Chambolle AOC bottling. There are thus one-and-a-half barrels of Les Sentiers and three of Les Noirots, the latter a particularly welcome addition to a range which is surely the most complete tour of Chambolle’s diverse terroirs that can be found along the Côte.

William Kelley, The Wine Advocate

As is her wont, Ghislaine Barthod was once again modest about her terrific 2017s while noting that “I honestly wasn’t sure what the fruit was going to give us in terms of wines. We enjoyed a relatively calm growing season that was for once much less rock and roll than what we have endured over the last few years. I chose to attack the picking relatively early, which is to say the 4th of September as I judged that we had little to gain in terms of additional maturity but plenty to lose in terms of acidity. The fruit was clean and while there was a bit of sorting necessary to eliminate berries that hadn’t completely ripened, the percentage was peanuts. The vinifications were easy and I chose to not push the extractions, in fact I really didn’t do much punching down at all. As to the wines, I was initially a bit skeptical as I found them to be a bit light and to lack real personality. But as the élevage progressed they not only put on weight but also became much more interesting, indeed to the point that I now very much like them. Despite the early harvest date, 2017 produced classically styled wines that do not resemble at all the wines produced by such other early harvesting vintages such as 2003, 2009 or 2015. I would describe that as a hypothetical blend of 2000 and 2002 with the suppleness and richness of the former combined with the freshness and minerality of the latter.” Readers are not seeing things as there are two new wines in the Barthod lineup as yields were sufficiently generous in 2017 to allow for the first time the fruit from Les Sentiers and Les Noirots to be vinified separately; normally it is declassified into the Chambolle villages. As was the case with the 2016 vintage, I found that the elegant and refined style of the Barthod wines was enhanced by the classic style of the 2017 vintage. As the scores and commentaries confirm, the quality here is first-rate and if you can find them, these are wines to put in your cellars. 

Allen Meadows, Burghound

Where in the World is Domaine Ghislaine Barthod?

Domaine Ghislaine Barthod is based in Chambolle-Musigny, Côte-de-Nuits, Burgundy, France

The film below explores the geology and geography of Chambolle-Musigny