If you aren’t yet hip to the “En Remilly” Premier Cru vineyard in the Burgundy village of Saint-Aubin, it’s not for a lack of trying on our part: We’ve offered quite a few mind-blowing whites from this criminally underrated/undervalued site, which sits just around the corner (and even abuts at one point) the cluster of “Montrachet” Grand Crus.
Of all the “next-door” Burgundies we champion here on SommSelect, En Remilly is arguably the top of the heap—and leave it to young rising star Lucien Rocault to have acquired a piece for himself. Lucien’s tiny domaine is headquartered a little further north—in Saint-Romain, another destination for some of Burgundy’s best-value whites—but his six hectares of vineyards are spread throughout the Côte de Beaune. He and his wife, Fanny, only established their label in 2008, but in a relatively short time their assured, organically farmed wines have found an enthusiastic audience—which includes a sommelier friend in Beaune who helped us arrange to direct-import several Rocault bottlings. Today’s wine is from the quantitatively low but qualitatively sky-high 2016 vintage, and as you enjoy its pitch-perfect melding of opulence and mineral energy, remember how it got that way: Touching Saint-Aubin’s borders with both Puligny- and Chassagne-Montrachet, En Remilly is literally a stone’s throw away from Grands Crus Le Montrachet and Chevalier-Montrachet. Its aspect is ever-so-slightly different (skewing south-southwest rather than east/southeast) and it is marginally higher on the Montrachet hill, but the physical differences are much less pronounced than the differences in prices. Rocault is running with the big dogs in En Remilly—star producers like Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, Hubert Lamy, Marc Colin, to name but a few—and he does do confidently and stylishly here. It’s exciting for us to introduce this hugely talented producer to a broader audience!
Alongside his wife, Fanny, and his young children, Lucien Rocault is building something special in his home village of Saint-Romain, where his family has made wine for 18 (!) generations. He’s a real-deal farmer who tends his vines organically (ECOCERT-certified) and cultivates an array of other agricultural products besides, including cereal grains, soybeans, and Burgundy IGP mustard. What we’ve noticed across all the wines we’ve direct-imported (including another best-in-class white Burgundy value, his Saint-Romain “Sous Roche”) is that they have the kind of energy that only comes from natural farming. It’s a vibrancy you can taste, and feel, and today’s wine, now with a few years of bottle age, is still on an upward trajectory—there’s lots of delicious drinking still ahead of it!
As is typical of the wines of En Remilly, this one has an opulence to it that could easily fool you into thinking you had a Grand Cru in your glass. The soils in the vineyard are a very pebbly limestone, much like those of Le Montrachet, with the main difference being the more westerly aspect of En Remilly—which exposes vines to more-intense afternoon sun relative to the Grand Crus. This has become kind of a “pet” vineyard for us, given our obsession with the “game of inches” that is Burgundy. The obsessives who mapped out the Premier and Grand Crus all those years ago really were painstakingly precise—and the result is a pricing hierarchy that often feels way out of whack given the realities on the ground.
Pour a glistening, golden glass of today’s 2016 En Remilly and there’s no mistaking it for anything else but impeccable, prototypical white Burgundy. Redolent of yellow apple, salted lemon, a hint of nectarine, honeysuckle, and wet stones, it is medium- to medium-plus in body, with electrifying freshness to balance its ample extract. It is typical of a lot of ’16s in that it is very luscious and pleasurable now but also poised to lay down for another 5-7 years. Decant it 15-30 minutes before serving in Burgundy bowls or larger all-purpose stems at 45-50 degrees, ideally with a true-blue white Burgundy standby like roast chicken with lots of lemon. There’s something so immensely satisfying about tracking down a wine of such pedigree at this price—savor it!
