2018 Domaine de la Vougeraie Savigny-lès-Beaune Premier Cru Les Marconnets 750 ml

In Burgundy, geography is normally destiny. A grand classification puts wines in their places based on a centuries-old ranking of their vineyards, and that’s usually how the wines turn out. But very occasionally, the right winemaker can elevate a bottle beyond the status of its soil.

Those bottles represent the best buys in the Côte d'Or, like Domaine de la Vougeraie’s Les Marconnets, one of the highlights of our trip to Burgundy.

Visiting Vougeraie is a masterclass in the terroirs of Burgundy, with one astounding wine after another. Despite their unassuming stucco building in the tiny hamlet of Premeaux-Prissey, the domaine has one of the most impressive sets of holdings in Burgundy, with one great wine after another, including a slew of Grands Crus. While tasting through the lineup, though, one wine stood out—their Savigny-Lès-Beaune Les Marconnets Premier Cru, which absolutely held its own against a plethora of $150+ bottles, despite being just half the price.

It’s an absolutely classic bottle of Burgundy. On the first pour, we admired the purple-garnet color and ruby edges, and couldn’t stop smelling the wine. It’s intense, yet delicate, with aromas of tiny strawberries mingled with violets, tea roses, red currants, and a bit of forest floor hinting at a palate that is coiled, yet expansive in its complexity. Airy and silky in texture yet surprisingly rich, the wine shows off a panoply of red fruits—raspberries, cherries, and strawberries—that are beautifully framed by a touch of earth and an exotic spice note. We wanted to stop the tasting there and just drink the wine for the rest of the afternoon.

That brilliance is the mark of a talented producer in an excellent vintage, when cooler, stonier sites like Les Marconnets rose to the stratosphere of Burgundy. 2018 has been widely praised for being a vintage of delicious exuberance, with Vinous’ Neal Martin describing the year’s wines as “seem[ing] to leap out of the glass with a sense of nascent joie-de-vivre”—perfectly capturing what we love about this wine with its balance of minerality, forest floor, and beautiful fruit.

The chance to offer a wine like their Savigny Marconnets doesn’t come around very often—they own a mere 1.83 hectares of the coveted vineyard—so we have to fight for every bottle. Lovers of Pinot Noir from both the New and Old World should take note, and quickly.