Domaine SC Guillard Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes ‘Réniard’ 2023

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

About SC Guillard

The honesty of the Guillard wines is striking. The fruit has serious depth and length, the tannins great quality. When young, they can appear very tightly wound often needing 12-24 months to resolve. Boy … when they do you’re in for some fun they deliver earthy opulent fruit and the acid is balanced long and fine definitely some classic Gevrey characters coming through. Great density and length of fruit I can see now why they are happy with the perceived higher acid when the wine is younger. As the wine has settled the acid is helping to tame the incredible richness of some superb fruit, bring the wine into balance as it matures gracefully.

Domaine Guillard is definitely under the radar. The owner, Michel does not own a computer. He does not have a cellar door and rarely opens his door, that is if you manage to find his winery. He has a fax machine but admits with a grin that he often does not put paper in it.

Tom, who with his partner Nadege imports the wine, found the Domaine by accident in 1992 when he did his first vintage in Burgundy and they have been going back regularly since then. Sometimes they were lucky enough to find Michel in his cellar and have managed to buy some wine, sometime not.

After many years of buying his wines, they managed to convince Mr Guillard to let them import a few bottles in Australia.

The Domaine was created by Michel’s Grand-mother, Jeanne Lyonnet.Born in 1882, she lived and worked in Gevrey as a maid.  She married in 1909 but soon after her wedding, her new husband Auguste had to go to war. She worked hard and saved enough money to buy her first few vines in 1913. When Auguste nicknamed Henri IV  came back from the war, he worked as a labourer for some big Gevrey Domaines.

In 1937 after much sacrifice, they bought their first piece of premier cru; Les Corbeaux.

In 1958 their only daughter and her husband André Guillard took over the domaine adding to the few vineyards already purchased. However, they still had to maintain a second job as labourers to sustain the family business.

Finally, Michel and his sister Odette upon retirement of their parents took over in 1979.

Both generations added slowly to the estate, but Michel speaks with great admiration and devotion about his dedicated grandmother who has been able, by pure hard work and determination to be a landowner, in what would of been an unusual occurrence in those days, a house cleaner buying a vineyard in one of the most sought after village of Burgundy!

In the Vineyard

There is not much info on the vineyard. Suffice it to say the vine age and sites combined with whatever vineyard practices are being used are yield delicious wines in the glass.

In the Winery

As with the vineyard we rely on what’s in the glass to tell us that whatever is happing in the winery works!

The 2022 Vintage

From Burghound

The best wines are modern classic Burgundies in the best sense of that term. They have something of everything in terms of a tantalising freshness as they are decidedly very Pinot in character followed by good, if not truly remarkable transparency on the palate. To obtain transparency, you usually have to sacrifice either richness or concentration and this is what is so special about the 22’s is that they have enough to each that it renders the mouthfeel to be particularly seductive while retaining the balance necessary such that a complete picture of a given terroir can be assessed and appreciated. With respect to agreeability 2022 really is one of those rare vintage where almost everyone can have their cake and eat it too, like them young, no problems, like them old no problems as well.

Where in the World are They?

Guillards 1er Cru’s are rest adjacent to Mazi in the case of Corbeaux and Clos-Saint-Jacques in the case of Lavaux and Poissenot.

In Gevrey-Chambertin, the various classifications are uncharacteristically (for Burgundy) well separated. It’s all down to geology; north of the Combe (and the village) lie a majority of the 26 premier cru vineyards. They are planted on Bajocian Ostria Acuminata marls mixed with red alluvia and slope wash – to you and me, that’s red clay soil. There are no grand crus here. To the south of the village lie the nine grand crus, planted on hard Bajocian crinoidal limestone with shallow soils – still characteristically red. Satellite premier crus can be found here, clinging to the coattails of some grand cru appellations. The quality drops off quickly as you head east into the alluvial plain i.e. towards the RN74 and the railway line beyond. The soil is still red, but you have to go much, much deeper to reach the bedrock.