Denis Mortet founded his domaine in Gevrey-Chambertin in 1992 and within a decade had made it one of the most talked-about addresses in the Côte de Nuits — ripe, deeply coloured, heavily oaked wines that divided opinion as sharply as they attracted it.

After his death in 2006, his son Arnaud Mortet took over at twenty-four. He has spent the years since moving the style away from extraction and new wood towards finesse: more whole bunches, less new oak, gentler infusion. The transformation is one of the most admired in modern Burgundy.

The domaine works around eleven hectares in and around Gevrey, farmed organically in practice.

Lavaux Saint-Jacques lies in the combe above Gevrey, where cool air draining down the valley keeps the site fresher than the village below. It is routinely named among the premiers crus that deserve grand cru standing.

2021 was the hardest vintage in a generation — April frost, then a cool wet summer — and volumes were tiny. What came through is the opposite of the 2018s: pale, fine-boned, high-acid wines in the classical mould, and increasingly regarded as a connoisseur’s vintage.

Red cherry and rose over cracked pepper and cool stone; fine-boned and lifted on the palate, the tannins delicate, closing long, fresh and mineral. The vintage suits Arnaud Mortet’s lighter hand perfectly.