2018 Domaine Fontaine-Gagnard Bourgogne Rouge 750 ml

You can’t write a list of the greatest and most important estates in Chassagne-Montrachet without Domaine Fontaine-Gagnard.

All of Burgundy follows their lead when it comes to the smallest Grand Cru vineyard in the Côte de Beaune, where they are the definitive reference-point estate. Their $100+ Premier Cru bottles incite bidding wars between the Michelin-starred destinations of Paris (Les Climats, Le Clarence) and New York City (Eleven Madison Park, Bâtard). 

But stay with us when we tell you it’s their Bourgogne Rouge that gets bargain lovers like us out of bed in the morning with a spring in our step. Today’s price is a superb value for serious red Burgundy from a canonical producer that Vinous and Burghound have showered with 96- and 95-point scores.

Yet it’s magnitudes more impressive when you consider that this is essentially a declassified village-level wine, offering genuine terroir transparency in a way a bottle of this ranking rarely does.

While other Bourgogne Rouges are blends from up to 300 different communes, this silky prize is fashioned almost entirely from a south-southeast parcel in Chassagne, where marbled marl and clay soils impart heft and layered complexity. Opening to a burst of black cherries, crushed violets, and wild herbs, it glides across the palate picking up nuances of tilled earth and peppery spices.

The estate’s young star—the willowy, intuitive Céline Fontaine—bottles this amazing wine mainly as a “thank you” to the sommeliers who purchase the domaine’s high-end bottles, which can run for hundreds or thousands of dollars. Total production is maybe a barrel or two, most of which never makes it to the States in the first place, and most of the bottles that do end up in the hands of those savvy sommeliers.

But we managed to edge in on a small piece of the pie, thanks to a tip from a Beaune-based associate. We asked for everything and anything we could get. The answer, after Paris and Lyon took their cuts, was just 42 cases. Channeling the soulful intensity that defines the domaine’s Premier Cru offerings for less than $40, this is one of the Côte de Beaune’s best—and most delicious—deals.

Founded in 1985 by Richard Fontaine and Laurence Gagnard, the domaine is young by Burgundy’s standards. But it has quickly climbed the ranks to become one of a handful of producers in Chassagne-Montrachet that can be considered truly benchmark in status. Their daughter, Céline, now runs things, and she continues to raise the bar through expanding the facilities, a dedication to traditional winemaking, and a relentless work ethic.

When we visited one spring, she told us she had been up at 2:45 a.m., scraping a film of ice off her windshield before speeding over to the vineyards to light candles to protect the vines from the frost. Pinot Noir of this quality from Burgundy is a labor-intensive, around-the-clock affair, hence why bottles are usually so expensive and why there is so little of it to begin with.

Even as Céline handles grapes from their world-famous properties in Le Montrachet and Bâtard-Montrachet, she pays attention to every detail that goes into this Bourgogne Rouge bottle—an offering other producers treat as an afterthought. Take advantage of every bottle you can before we inevitably run out.