Domaine Claude Riffault

Stéphane Riffault has been at the helm of this top-notch family domaine for about a decade now and has adopted a wholly Burgundian approach to the management of his vineyards. When he took over from his father in the late noughties, he separated many of his parcels to produce various microcuvées that reflect the subtleties of the different soil types. Pruning is vigorous and Stéphane looks to keep yields tight. Sadly, the past three vintages have seen nature keep things tight, too and production levels have been frustratingly low. Stéphane has half a hectare of Desmalets, which has about 40 centimetres of terre blanche soil sitting on sedimentary flagstones from the Kimmeridgian age of the secondary Jurassic era. The juice is aged in barrel for about ten months. The vines in Denisottes, one of the largest plots of the domaine, are forty years old and are embedded again in terre blanche soil which lies on smaller, more erosive limestone. This cuvée is aged in 600 litre barrels for about ten months. Les Chailloux lies on very flinty soil, a result of a geological fault lifting the flint from deep in the earth. The resultant wine is wonderfully chiselled and flinty with lots of minerality and saline freshness. La Noue is a large vineyard of 2.5 hectares with about seven different plots and produces both a vibrant rosé and a red which is round and juicy.