From reading Coates’ books, it sounds like Barthod is the only domaine with vines that are designated 1er Cru within Veroilles. Anyone know why just Barthod’s vines are premier cru and how that came to be?
I was researching the vineyard after popping an 05 Bruno Clair Veroilles (very tasty). Who else owns vines there besides those two?
Oosh, talk about esoteric. Veroilles is tiny. Less than half an hectare for sure but I don’t know exactly how much off the top of my head. Barthod has the only 1er cru portion of it (how they decided in a 1 acre vineyard which section was 1er and which was not is somewhat beyond me). Bruno Clair and Fougeray de Beauclair to my knowledge are the only others who make a Veroilles although I guess it is conceivable that someone else has a few vines in there as well and uses it in a Chambolle village wine. I would guess Jasper Morris’ new tome would cover this in depth. Could someone open to the Veroilles page and recite please? Anyway, you don’t see it that much because there simply isn’t very much so good find. It’s right around Bonnes Mares so it has good pedigree for sure.
The Bruno Clair bottling is excellent IMHO. 05 and 06 were really great, have an 08 on deck here at some point to see how it faired in a cooler year.
Hey Jim…I’m off today, so looked it up–>
“Although some 90 % of Les Veroilles, which lies above Bonnes Mares, is classified at village level, a small parcel does have premier cru status. This is the SE corner, which was promoted to premier cru in 1987. THere is more topsoil here than in the village sector, much of which was cleared and planted by Bruno Clair when he first started out, and which is almost on the bare rock. The premier cru sector belongs to Ghislaine Barthod.”
This explains why it is so hard to find. I feel lucky to have 4 of these coming for 2008.
Les Veroilles is not tiny - 5.73 ha - but the 1er Cru portion is only 0.6 ha, the rest 0f 5.13 is village and owned by Bruno Clair. I think the Clair-vines vines were very young, so only the parcel of Barthod has been classified 1er Cru in 1987.
Interesting, thanks everyone for the input.
I really loved the Clair version, I’ll have to hunt down a Barthod for comparison’s sake.
Yeah, I realized later I was getting my producer hectares and total hectares screwed up. Still, it’s not all that big and the 1er part is very small. Busted.
I’ve really enjoyed Barthod’s 1er cru version in recent years. Haven’t had any older wines from this vineyard. My sense is the Barthod version is a long distance runner and will reward cellar time.