David Duband Bourgogne Hautes Cotes de Nuits Chardonnay 2022

Very small quantities produced from 50 year old vines grown in the village of Chevannes in the Hautes Côtes, long home to the Duband family and its winery. This is the first time we have been able to secure any of this wine and what a success it is! 

The grapes are picked by hand and whole-bunch pressed, then cold-settled for 24 hours. Wild-yeast fermented in stainless steel and matured in 70 % stainless steel and 30 % new French oak barriques for 16 months, with an occasional bâtonnage. The wine is lightly fined and filtered before bottling.

This is a fresh, finely textured White Burgundy, showing lovely grapefruit and peach fruit notes with a hint of marzipan and a stylish touch of creamy oak. Showing brilliantly now and will drink beautifully for some years. Very limited.

'David Duband, who exploits, among other vines, the former Jacky Truchot parcels, as well as consults for the Louis Max wines, succinctly told me that 2018 is a "vintage that I’m actually very happy with as far as the results are concerned. There were a few ups and downs during the growing season with some mildew in the early going, and then spots of hail in Nuits during July but otherwise the season was fairly calm if very hot and dry. I started picking on the 3rd of September and brought in very generous yields, at least for us, which is to say between 38 and 48 hl/ha. Potential alcohols were really very reasonable given how hot it was, ranging from 12.5 to 13.3%. I used from 60 to 95% whole clusters and basically had no real problems with the vinifications though I did monitor them very carefully. As the style of the wines, they’re not nearly as marked by the high heat of the vintage as I thought that they might be and they also express their respective terroirs very well. I like them."' Burghound January 2020.

Regarded as one of the rising stars of Burgundy, David Duband took over his family domaine a very young age and now has more than 20 vintages of experience behind him. Starting with very small family holdings David, together with his business partner Francois Feuillet, have added to his portfolio of wines through the purchase of some exceptional old Grand cru vineyards throughout Gevrey Chambertin and Morey St Denis.

In recent years David has adapted his work in both the vineyards and cellars and in the last few years is producing wines with not only remarkable finesse and detail but also exhilarating intensity and freshness. Working organically in the vineyards and with low levels of S02 in the cellar he also uses a relatively high percentage of whole bunch ferment and a low percentage of new oak for ageing and this is adapted to each wine as it needs. This results in wines of striking purity with fabulous depth and intensity without sacrificing the details of the origins of each parcel of grapes. These are wines showing terroir and the soil signature of the fruit for each parcel above all else. These are wines that are built to age classically and gracefully.