Domaine Trapet is not exactly a new name in Burgundy. They've been growing grapes in Gevrey-Chambertin since the 1800s, and have amazing parcels in all the best vineyards, up to and including Le Chambertin. Back... Read More

Domaine Trapet is not exactly a new name in Burgundy. They've been growing grapes in Gevrey-Chambertin since the 1800s, and have amazing parcels in all the best vineyards, up to and including Le Chambertin. Back in the day, they sold their best grapes to the likes of Domaine Drouhin and Maison Leroy.

But since the 1960s, they've been bottling their own wines. The style has fluctuated a bit, as styles have varied with the generations. Today the domaine is run by Jean-Louis Trapet, whose style can best be summarized as a laser-like focus on making delicious Pinot Noir.

Here are the technicalities of that: light extraction (a touch of bâtonnage or punching down at the beginning of fermentation, but just remontage—pumping over—after that), very little new oak, and whole-cluster when the grapes are ideally healthy (which is quite often, as the farming is biodynamic).

This sounds like what many of Burgundy's best are doing today. But in one area Trapet departs: while "reductive" wine-making is all the rage (limiting the wine's exposure to oxygen), Trapet likes to make his wines open and accessible from release, including by using as little sulfur as possible in the process. That's how he makes his Pinot Noir so delicious!