Ruchottes Chambertin 2009 Roumier ‘Michel Bonnefond’

This wine is made from a plot sharecropped between Christophe Roumier and Michel Bonnefond. A small part of the production is labeled under Michel Bonnefond’s name.

Domaine Georges Roumier is a wine producer based in the Côte de Nuits village of Chambolle-Musigny, where it produces some of Burgundy’s most expensive, highly rated, and sought-after wines.

The Roumier story began when Georges Roumier married Genevieve Quanquin in 1924. Quanquin had family vineyards in Chambolle-Musigny, which Roumier began to expand upon.

Instead of buying plots outright, Roumier used the French sharecropping/lease system of métayage, whereby an individual cultivates the land for the owner in exchange for a proportion of the produce, to build up the domaine’s range. Roumier began with small plots in Musigny, moving onto Bonnes Mares as well as securing two plots in Clos de Vougeot.

Most recently, Domaine Georges Roumier expanded into Ruchottes-Chambertin, where it is entitled to two thirds of the harvest from a 0.5 hectare (1.2 acre) parcel owned by Michel Bonnefond. The other third is sometimes encountered as Ruchottes wines labeled with the Bonnefond name (the wine is identical to the Roumier version).

When Georges Roumier died in 1965, his son Jean-Marie took over the winemaking. Eventually Christophe, Jean-Marie’s son, took over and is the domaine’s current winemaker. His focus is very much on the terroir, so new oak is used sparingly and the temperature of the ferment is kept low to allow for the delicacy and fragrance of the wine to shine through.

The most important plots in the Georges Roumier portfolio are in the Bonnes Mares Grand Cru vineyard (in which the domaine has 1.6 hectares/3.9 acres) and the Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru Les Amoureuses vineyard (0.4 hectares/one acre), which make two of the domaine’s most sought-after wines.