2010 Vincent Legou Beaune (MAGNUM)

To get to Domaine Legou, you have to go up the hill from Vosne-Romanée, up the D109, past Romanée-St Vivant on your left, Suchots on your right, past Richebourg and Brûlées and Beaux Monts, up through vines that don’t often get named on maps, and past patches of woods. At a small cluster of farm houses, turn left to get to another cluster of farm houses. Take the first left- Domaine Vincent Legou is a couple houses down on the right. The streets will be empty—one imagines that every one who lives there is down the hill, pruning or raising the wires or weeding or doing whatever it is needs to be done in the Park Place and Boardwalk of the Burgundy vineyards that are just a short drive away.

Vincent Legou knows these vineyards well, having taken over his family’s estate after eight years working for Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (he doesn’t mention this on his website—one suspects the usual Burgundian tendency toward understatement). Very soon thereafter he began the conversion to organic viticulture, and he takes the respect of each terroir and each vine to all of his vineyards, from his parcels in the Hautes Côtes de Nuits down to Puligny.

Native yeasts, low sulfur additions, and a minimal influence of oak are the hallmark of his winemaking.