Burgundy’s best kept secrets – the delicious and accessibly priced wines of Marsannay

Today, the best of the single vineyard sites, and there are some very good ones, are poised to receive 1er cru status, in recognition of their distinction and quality. It’s been a lengthy campaign that looks set to come to fruition before long.

And if, for most of the 20th Century, Marsannay’s fate was to produce wines of rusticity and somewhat meagre fruit, the picture is rapidly changing in the 21st Century. Quality conscious growers are putting more and more effort into the appellation, in doing so gaining a keener understanding of the variety of terroir found there. Combine this with the warmer seasons and much more sensitive winemaking, and there have arguably never been better wines being produced that bear the name Marsannay.

The brilliant Bruno Clair domaine is singled out by Neal Martin in his recent Burgundy 2022 report. In it he remarks “Tasting the domaine’s wines over more than 20 years, I have seen a refinement over the last five or six years. There was once as much rusticity as charm. Nowadays, there’s a real delicacy, a fineness of touch, stylistically moving their wines towards Rousseau-like transparency and precision. There’s much to offer across the range away from magnets like their Clos Saint-Jacques and Bonnes-Mares, excellent as they are. Readers should check out their superb spread of single vineyard Marsannay cuvées or their overlooked range of whites. If not there already, this producer is fast becoming one of my favorites”.

For the Clairs, the perfectly situated Longeroies is the headline red act; an old vine Marsannay cuvee that ages beautifully and offers genuine gravitas and complexity, frequently surprising people when poured blind. Neal awards the 2022 an impressive (91-93) remarking on the wine’s “Great focus and energy”. The “perfumed” Vaudenelles on the other hand offers delicacy, purity, and floral red fruited approachability in a slender, dancing style. The latter is particularly compellingly priced for the 2022 En Primeur campaign.

Beyond these two you have the three single vineyard offerings from Ch. De Marsannay – now the largest fully organic estate in the region. Under the watchful eye of Sylvain Pabiot, quality has been on the up and up at this estate. The 2022s are thrilling. To taste Clos de Jeu side by side with Es Chezots and Clos du Roy one cannot fail to be convinced of the terroir differentiation that Marsannay is capable of. The mid-slope Clos de Jeu, in Sylvain’s hands, is invariably a wine of easy charm and generous fruit; Es Chezots, grown on fossilized limestone, demonstrating power and minerality in equal measure; while Clos du Roy, on hard limestone, offers the most complete package of the three, sophisticated fruit over refined yet present structure.

At today’s prices (being released on the 17th January), all of these wines offer a compelling argument for the region as a source of some of the best value drinking the region has to offer.

To read our tasting notes for the wines in this offer, please visit the individual product pages and view them alongside the 2022 vintage.