Jadot, Leflaive, and others make Chevalier and years ago Ramonet worked a trade with—I think—Chartron et Trebuchet to obtain some Chevalier—giving them 3 barrels of Batard for 2 in return of Chevalier, finishing the élevage chez Ramonet. The Ramonet Chevy is much like the Batard and the Bienvenue with the telltale mint and class—great wine. So buying a quality Chevy at 1/5 the price of Ramonet is a good deal.
I think Chartron and Chartron et Trebuchet are different domaines. It’s unclear to me.
Hopefully William will chime in and correct my errors with the aforementioned.
This is my first taste of Chartron Chevy from their small monopole Clos des Chevaliers. It’s a bit leaner than Ramonet but a lovely rendition, very lean and classy, elegant wine. Wine was quite restrained, opening some with a bit of air time. Bottle was drained too quickly. If I could trust the lack of premox, I’d wait a decade more and the wine will gain some weight. But it’s lovely now.
Chartron et Trebuchet was in the Chartron family but was sold to Bejot a number of years ago - Bejot had their problems, so today I think it’s with Moingeon. Chartron et Trebuchet is a negociant label.
Domaine Jean Chartron is the family domaine and your wine and their Clos de Pucelles are the most important holdings there. They also have a négoce licence, mainly allowing them to exchange barrels so that they can also produce Montrachet, Corton-Charlemagne and others. They are an important domaine in Puligny with fine quality, way higher than the early 2000s and before, they also bottle some Puligny 1er Caillerets red! Since at least 2015 the entry wines here were with DIAM - not yet through the whole range I think…
We’ve been lucky enough to see a fair few of these here over the last couple of years. Oldest vintage tried was the ‘08. Definitely been an improvement curve since then, not that the ‘08 was bad. Used to be great value too, but 60% up in the last couple of vintages. The Cailleret is excellent too.
I have a bottle of the same vintage. Coravin tasted last year and thought it was quite good, floral nose, velvety palate, but tasting rather young. I’m going to give mine a little more time.
I had too many oxidized bottles of post '96 Chartron and stopped buying. I hope they have a better recent track record since they have such good vineyards.
Bill answers your question, Alan, but here is a map, shared with the permission of the author, Feng Tao, so you can see who owns what. Of course, the real interest lies in walking the vineyard with the map!
map is cool—B. Colin sure has a sliver—must be one row of vines! Leflaive wraps around 3 sides of Niellon, which shows why she’d get so easily mad when he sprayed insecticides in his vines and cross contaminated her organic vines.
If memory serves, Bruno Colin is the exploiter - eventually as it was only replanted last year - but Picard could be the actual owner and they do have some Demoiselles that wears their label…
Had an interesting blind side by side with the 10’ Ramonet and 10’ Chartron Chevalier Montrachet about a year ago, courtesy of Alex Goldstein. We all kind of assumed the better wine was the Ramonet, but it ended up being the Chartron on reveal. It stood to reason that Chartron wouldn’t just give the best rows or the best parts of the parcel to Ramonet.
Though this was just one tasting, one vintage, where the Ramonet didn’t have the depth or the complexity of the Chartron. Expect the 12’ you had was a bit better than the 10’ we had.
The parcel is actually pretty homogeneous, so differences are likely in farming and winemaking - and then, factor in bottle variation - rather than distinctions of site. Interestingly, when d’Auvenay bought their Chevalier from Chartron, they didn’t replant: so that wine also comes from the same vines of the same age and genetic make up as Chartron’s and Ramonet’s.
In fact, you don’t have to leave the house to check them out: google street view allows you to get close enough, even if the photos are a few years old. You can identify the d’Auvenay rows as they are trained higher (even higher today than when this was taken)…
Good google map find there William. So is the Clos just the three walls being separation from Cailleret, at the bottom end the wall by the path that goes right across Chevalier, at least to the Leflaive plot, and then a similar wall at the top end? Seems a stretch ! Also, I thought Chartron occasionally makes a non-clos, generic Chevalier. Is that correct, and if so where is that fruit from? Always sobering to see size of holdings.
Good to know that there’s nothing too wildly variable about their parcel. The difference in the glass was such that it was hard not to think about a “home court” advantage of some sort.
We had Chartron’s '17 Chevalier ‘Clos des Chevaliers’ next to their '17 Corton-Charlemagne at Monday Table a few months ago. Both excellent but the general preference was for the CC. Interestingly, the CC was sealed with Diam and the Chevalier natural cork.
We were discussing Chevalier-Montrachet earlier this year, and the other day a friend was out in the vines and shot this clip for me. We start looking at the Chevalier-Montrachet belonging to Philippe Colin; then we see the much higher, non-hedged canopies of Domaine d’Auvenay; and then the vines of Domaine Jean Chartron that constitute to Clos des Chevaliers.
Colin has a big parcel and it looks like the problem is just in a small part…
For me, the real interest is the difference in canopy management: from this video, you can really get a sense of how much higher Leroy’s canopies are compared with conventional Burgundian hedging. When you consider that the vine genetics are the same in her plot of Chevalier as in Chartron’s, and that the geology has to be pretty much identical, it is really thought-provoking to compare the d’Auvenay Chevalier and the Chartron Chevalier in the glass. Of course, such comparisons are a big part of the intellectual interest of the region.
! Also, I thought Chartron occasionally makes a non-clos, generic Chevalier. Is that correct, and if so where is that fruit from? Always sobering to see size of holdings.