I love Burgundy wines but it is difficult to find really good ones other than at auction or at inflated prices. Do any of the Burgundy domaines have allocation lists like California wineries (and ship to the US)?
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Maison Ilan had a thing like this going for awhile… 
Seriously:
many (most) top Burgundy producers do have a limited number of private clients, usually already for years or even decades (like me).
Most do not add new names, at least not the 1st time you´re visiting or asking.
I myself cannot get on some lists I´d like to …
However, if you are lucky in finding a (good, not too famous) producer with substancial vineyard holdings and higher production numbers,
and if you are (first) asking for the easier wines - you might get something … no Grand Crus, rarely 1er Crus, but maybe Village and regional wines …
Vintage 2017 might be a better start than 2015/16 regarding production numbers …
All much easier when there in person (and speaking at least a little bit French) than only by e-mail/internet …
Attention: DRC never accepts private buyers … !!!
It is pretty easy to get wines from Burgundy to the US. There is a company called Cote D’Or Imports that ships from Burgundy to the US. https://www.cotedorpdx.com/ Most of the wineries in Burgundy use them. You pay Cote D’Or for shipping and insurance. The price for shipping goes down the more you ship. If you buy more than 6 bottles from a winery or store, Cote D’Or will pick the wines up from the winery or store and the price that you pay for the wine does not include VAT.
I have done this primarily when visiting Burgundy (or when a friend does), not ordering from the US. Certainly, there are stores where you can purchase wines by calling them and have Cote D’Or ship them to you. One excellent example is the Caveau de Chassagne Montrachet. http://www.caveaudechassagne.com/ They mostly have wines from various Chassagne producers, and maybe a few others, but at pretty good prices. It will be hard to get a producer like Ramonet, but you can get most of the other producers from the village there, including things like red Chassagne that are hard to find in the US - I bought reds from Ramonet and Bernard Moreau. Ask for a price list. The Caveau will email it to you.
There are Caveaus in almost every village in Burgundy. Some of the prices will be bargains compared with US prices, others, not so much, esp. after including shipping and insurance.
Certainly, Gerhard is correct that you are not going to be able to get on client lists for the top domaines like DRC, Mugneret-Gibourg, Roumier, Coche, etc. However, there are lots of other wineries where one can buy wines, sometimes at prices substantially cheaper than in the US. When I have visited these wineries, buying wines (including Grand Crus and Premier Crus) has been easy to do. Don’t know how they will react to phone calls from the US from unknown people. I once tried that at a winery where I have visited and purchased wine from several times when visiting. They always have wine to sell me and are very, very happy to do so when I am in Burgundy but would not do so when I called from the US. Not sure what the issue was - could be they don’t want to upset their importer. One winery I visited this summer where they had very attractive prices was Pierre Amiot in MSD. Got Clos de la Roche and a bunch of premier crus from them. So, that may be a place to start.
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Very interesting Howard. Just curious; how much does the shipping/insurance add to the price? I realize it would vary depending on the order size but it would be interesting to get an idea of the net difference (not that this would be terribly useful to me personally)
Shipping, depending on quantity purchased and exchange rate. My order this summer was combined with that of three other people (two of which bought more than me) and so a good bit of wine is being shipped. It was a bit under 11 Euros a bottle. I don’t think you get over 15 Euros and probably less even with a much smaller order. Insurance is 4.5% of the insured value (presumably cost) of the bottle.
VAT is 20%. So, depending on the price of the wine, you can save as much or more in VAT as you spend in shipping cost. When I learned about Cote D’Or and did the math, because of the VAT savings I started shipping wine back rather than putting it in luggage when I visit Burgundy.
Certainly more convenient, not having to schlep the stuff around. Wonder if similar arrangements can be made in other regions. Thanks for the info
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I would be interested in that as well.
One more place to buy from. The Drouhin winery is in the heart of Beaune. You have to pay for tours and tastings there (well worth it IMHO) and there also is a store where you can buy Drouhin wines. My recollection is that the younger vintages of the wines they sold there were not great bargains, although I am not sure, but there are some older vintages that seemed like pretty good values. Two years ago, when I visited Drouhin, I bought some 1993 Chambolle Musigny Premier Cru (according to my CellarTracker records, I paid $111 for this, including shipping and insurance), for example and a friend bought some mide-1990s Beaune Clos de Mouches. Again, don’t know if you could order from them from the US, but if you are in Burgundy it is a good place to check out. Seems like a good place to buy older wines as I assume storage is perfect.
You can have the other regions ship to the importer (hillebrand). I buy from retailers in Spain and Italy and they just charge me shipping (pretty standard $40-50 a case) to beaune.