Tasted in Gevrey-Chambertin with Dominique Gallois, 10 March 2016.

Domaine Dominique Gallois
9 Rue Mal de Lattre de Tassigny
21220 Gevrey-Chambertin
Tel: +33 3 80 34 11 99
www.domaine-gallois.com

It was Dominique’s great-grandfather who built the house and cellars here in Gevrey-Chambertin – he was a Bizot – but his daughter, Charlotte, married a Gallois. Charlotte’s son, Jean, ran the domaine until 1989 when Dominique took charge. It was Dominique who decided to bottle and market the wines, instead of selling to the négoce.

This domaine is a modest size – only 4 hectares – but with some lovely parcels of vines – Dominique is quite proud to say that his father never got around to using all those ‘new’ fertilisers in the 1970s, so he has never had acidity problems due to too much potassium in the soil!

Dominique is usually the only bottler of the rare Gevrey 1er Cru – Petits Cazetiers. Philippe Naddef, Dominique’s cousin, also owns some vines here but never declares this cru separately. His Combe au Moines is outstanding every year, and his Charmes-Chambertin can be superb – planted in 1910 the vines are in Charmes ‘proper’ and sit directly across the road from Chambertin.

The wines…

Dominique noted that it would probably end of April before he got around to bottling his 2014s, as his cellar is cold. the last of the 2014 malos were done during the 2015 harvest. So we looked at a couple of 2015s in barrel before doing an interesting Combe au Moines vertical:

Dominique notes “2015 is smallest harvest I’ve seen in 30 years. Our yields were only 50% of a normal harvest. But these wines have a balance and concentration that I’ve never seen before.”

Always one of my favourite – hardly heard-of producers in Gevrey, and his Combe au Moines is really a wine worth searching for!

2015 Gevrey-Chambertin
11 parcels worth of fruit
Simply gorgeous aromas of round, red fruit, faintly powdery at the edge. Lithe, some muscle, very mineral, but fine texture and length. Excellent!

2015 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Combe aux Moines
About 0.5 hectares, planted in 1954. Never a high yielding plot – a good year is 8 barrels.
Deep, this is a gorgeous nose, vibrant, complex utterly wonderful. A hint more sweetness, a little more padding too. A little more oak, delivering a faint vanilla, there’s a little in the finish too. A little patience required for the oak, but it will be worth it…

2013 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Combe aux Moines
Deep, super fruit a few dark herbs, lovely width too. Width in the mouth too and a certain richness of flavour. Perfectly balanced and finely long – this is tasting great.

2012 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Combe aux Moines
Deep colour ‘more elegeant for me’ – A faint, biscuity reduction. More lithe, more direct but fine texture that’s faintly cushioned, more saline – excellent, concentrated length and brilliant persistence.

2011 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Combe aux Moines
Very wide, open, giving, some flowers some pyrazine. Lovely texture, it melts over the palate, good flavour, some pyrazine here too, but for those of modest or no sensitivity – really super, super…