2022 Maison du Chancelier Les Bressandes Premier Cru Beaune 750 ml

Domaine du Chancelier operates out of an 18th-century building in the historic center of Beaune that once belonged to Nicolas Rolin—chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy and founder, with his wife Guigone de Salins, of the Hospices de Beaune in 1443. Elsa and Cédric Ehrhart named their estate after Rolin’s title, and their choice of this building was deliberate: a way of rooting themselves in Burgundy’s deepest history even as they were starting from nothing.

They made their first vintage in 2016 from purchased fruit and now farm five hectares organically across owned and long-term contracted parcels, choosing harvest dates and picking the grapes themselves. It is, as Elsa puts it, a “four hands only” operation—and the wines show what two people with the right skills and obsessions can accomplish when there are no shortcuts.

Everything at the winery is gravity-fed. Reds are vinified without sulfur, fermented with indigenous yeasts, and aged on their lees for a full year in oak. For Premier Cru parcels, Elsa employs Vinification Intégrale—fermenting grapes in the same 500-liter barrels in which they’ll age, producing gentler extraction and a wine of uncommon finesse.

Les Bressandes sits on the upper slopes of the Beaune hillside, east-facing, on shallow, stony clay-limestone soils. The parcel traces its history to the 13th century, when it was owned by a canon of Beaune named Jean Bressand—from whom it takes its name. The vines are 30 years old and have been producing serious wine from this address for centuries.

The 2022 vintage was a strong one across the Côte de Beaune—a warm, precocious season refreshed by rain in mid-August, producing a harvest that was clean and well-balanced, with the concentration of a warm year and the acidity to keep everything in proportion.

Imported by Martine’s Wines, founded by the late Martine Saunier—one of the first Americans to bring serious small-domaine Burgundy to this country, and a figure whose palate shaped a generation of collectors.

We are proud to offer this wine at the best price in the nation. Those who know the domaine will need no further convincing. Those who don’t—this is the introduction.