Les Champs de l'Abbaye Rully Les Cailloux, Cote Chalonnaise, France 2022
If ever there were a story of love and–not just of–wine, this is it. Alain Hasard and his partner Isabelle lived and worked in Paris, together breathing in deeply the culture of food and wine, as well as for a time working on restaurant floor as sommeliers. They share an attunement to life, not just to wine and its unique ways of being, but also to how it can bring people together, bringing not just joy but meaning to life’s routines. Thus inspired, Isabelle and Alain sought a way to commune with the source of wines, which is to say the vineyards themselves.
In the late 1990s, Les Champs de l’Abbaye was born–the product of a single purchased parcel in the western Côte Chalonnaise (Côtes du Couchois), which extends the limestone soils of the Cote d’Or directly north but finds itself on a much less continuous slope. Here, in the hands of dedicated and rigorous vignerons, wines from the region are, of extremely high quality, particularly in Rully and Mercurey, where a few top names have shown the world what is possible.
They have a small parcel of 40 year-old vines in Rully on clay and limestone soils. The 2022 is showing stunning elegance in its youth, with seductive aromas of dried apricots, flint, wild honeysuckle and integrated hints of new oak. The palate is charged with flavors of pear, citrus, and quince with an intense mineral-laden acidity, balancing the lovely ripeness of the 2022 vintage. The finish is long and remarkably stony. Drink now with shell fish, comté cheese, or roast chicken
From their home base in Aluze, they farm single plots of high-density plantings of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, including top lieu-dits Rully La Chatalienne and Les Cailloux and in Mercurey as well. Yields are excruciatingly low, thus production is even smaller and more precious than surface area of the domaine implies. Winemaking is without additions other than the use of sulfur at bottling. Alain says simply that the wines are intended to be evocative of their place and time; I would only add that their generosity, energy, and love are evocative of their makers as well.