The Bitouzet family has been farming in Volnay since the early 1800s and were among the first families in the village to bottle their own wines. The family’s holdings in Volnay, now overseen by Vincent Bitouzet, cover an impressive diversity of village-level and Premier Cru parcels. Bitouzet owns a modest .7 hectares of Taillepieds, which earns its name (roughly translated to “slash your feet”) because of its steep incline and rocky soils. This vineyard was first planted by the Bitouzet family in 1971, and, while the volume of its productivity is beginning to decline, it is absolutely peaking in terms of the depth and quality of wine it produces. The parcel produces about 150 cases of wine each vintage, less than 50 of which come into the US each year.

Vincent Bitouzet farms all his vineyards organically and all fruit is harvested by hand. This restraint is echoed in the cellar: juice is vinified gently and slowly with no heavy-handed technology and minimal sulfur. The end goal of the entire process is to produce wines that mature in the cellar for many years, and gradually evolve in aromatics and structure. The family’s wines are seldom open and enjoyable upon release, but they offer a consistently impressive reward to those patient enough to cellar the wines.

Bitouzet's 2016 Volnay 1er Cru Taillepieds is a beautiful storm of red and black cherry cherries, black mulberry, hibiscus, fresh garden herbs, and crushed limestone—and as always with the finest Taillepieds, there is a slowly unfurling black mushroom/aged tea leaf quality that delicately paints the edges of each sip. I look back on my notes from previous vintages of this same wine and there’s a common theme: namely, “completeness” and dark beauty that is evident in each successive year. This 2016 Taillepieds, like many before it, is proof that the finest bottles of red Burgundy have an ability to evoke experiences and sensations that transcend one’s existing understanding of grape variety and soil—this is not merely a wine, but rather a genuinely moving ‘experience’!