Just across the street from Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Vosne-Romanee Domaine Jean Grivot has a very fine set of holdings from prime sites in the Cote. Grivots go back a long way in Burgundy. Jean Grivot took over from his father Gaston in 1955, and handed control to his son Etienne in the early 1980s. When Etienne took over, it took him some years to find his own voice. At first, he moved from the house style for gentle, graceful wines towards a more concentrated style. By the mid-1990s, he worried that this style might be masking terroir, and began to prioritise finesse over anything else, fine-tuning his vineyard and cellar work. Etienne’s children Mathilde and Hubert made their first vintage with him in 2010, and took over fully in 2017, though Etienne remains a sage and watchful presence in the background. Mathilde and Hubert make wines very much in their father’s vein. Grapes are 100% destalked (no whole bunch here). Fermentations start naturally, with pumpovers once per day. The wines go into barrel once fermentation has finished, and four different tonneliers are used so as to avoid the signature of any one marking the wine. These are graceful, beautiful and serious wines from Vosne-Romanee and beyond. (NT 13/04/26)
Domaine Jean Grivot
