Maison Thiriet - Volnay Les Grands Champs 2018

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Volnay wine is produced in the commune of Volnay in Côte de Beaune of Burgundy, and in some vineyards in the commune of Meursault. The Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) Volnay is only used for red wine with pinot noir as the main grape variety. There are no Grand Cru vineyards within Volnay, but several highly regarded Premier Cru vineyards. The AOC was created in 1937 (87 years ago).

In 2008, there were 206.7 hectares (511 acres) of vineyard surface was in production for Volnay wine at village and Premier Cru level, and 7,733 hectoliter of wine was produced, corresponding to just over 1 million bottles.

The AOC regulations also allow up to 15% total of chardonnay, pinot blanc and pinot gris as accessory grapes in the red wines, but this not very often practiced. The allowed base yield is 40 hectoliter per hectare. The grapes must reach a maturity of at least 10.5% potential alcohol for village-level wine, and 11.0% for Premier Cru wine.

The style of Volnay wine is typically light and aromatic, and elegant rather than powerful, with considerably less tannin than the Pommard wines from the neighboring village.

First vintage 2018. Les Grands Champs is located below below En l’Ormeau below the village of Volnay and is in fact a split lieu-dit, a small part of Les Grands Champs being 1er cru. 100% whole bunch. 20% new oak.

Maison Thiriet Description

Camille Thiriet is a star in the making. Sharp as a tack and hell bent on creating the finest wines by the modest means at her disposal, she has been producing characterful Burgundies from a 20m-squared garage behind her parents’ B&B, the statuesque Chateau Comblanchien in the Côte de Nuits, since 2016. With a few old vines of her own, Thiriet farms organically, working the land by hand and with her two horses, Obelix and Véga. Grapes are pumped over, crushed under foot and go into a ratchet press, with bottling, labeling and waxing, again, all done by hand. ‘Labour of love’ is no exaggeration here, and we are thrilled to be the sole UK distributor of these authentic, genuinely artisanal wines.

Thiriet works alongside her partner, Canadian-born cellar master Matt Chittick, whom she met while they were both working at the Domaine de Bellene, in Beaune. She subsequently gained experience at Domaine de la Côte in California and he is now Aubert de Villaine’s winemaker at Domaine de Villaine in the Côte Chalonnaise. In addition to their own, impeccable fruit, they source grapes from a network of trusted growers, including Savagnin from the town of Montigny-Lès-Arsures in the Jura. That may have raised some local’s eyebrows, but that is precisely what makes this dynamic young couple so intriguing.

The first wines came out of the 2016 vintage – before the garage even had electricity – and consisted of a Bourgogne Chardonnay and Côte de Nuits Villages, which remain Maison Camille Thiriet’s flagship wines (and, incidentally, higher in price than those from its latterly acquired, more prestigious appellations). There were initially just four barrels of the Bourgogne Chardonnay ‘Cuvée Confidentielle’, so named owing to the modest size of the obliging Puligny-Montrachet vineyard with 80-year-old vines, and three barrels of the Côte de Nuits Villages from the lieu-dit of ‘Aux Montagnes’, in Comblanchien, whose soils Thiriet regards as premier cru quality.