The wines of Denis Bachelet have a cult following. The estate is short of three hectares. The vines were inherited by Denis’s father from his parents, but he left for Belgium in the sixties to pursue love and a different career. Denis went to live with his grandmother, began working the vines in his early teens and made his first vintage in his late teens. Those were the great wines he made from the start. Denis has very old vines to work with, 100 years for the Charmes, 80 for Corbeaux, 65 for the villages and more than 30 for the Cotes de Nuits Villages. Certainly that is great matiere premiere to work with. But despite the fact that he could really every drop his grapes produce, pitifully low-yielding old vines are not enough for standards such as his. He prunes short and is despotic when it comes to instructing harvesters to sort everything that is not perfect. And that’s about it. Everything else is straightforward and natural, no yeast, no filtration, long ageing on the lees if they are healthy. After the cask tasting, Denis will lead you down traitorous stair to an even smaller bottle cellar to taste the previous vintage. It’s hard to believe that up to a few years ago, before he could afford temperature control in the upstairs room this was the barrel cellar. On the floor there are groupings of a half a dozen or so bottles, all he has left of a few vintages of Charmes. One would not dare to ask him to open one. More often than not he does anyway. His wines are always among the very best in Gevrey.