The château, pictured this week.

Laurent Gotti’s fine site (here, in French) this week broke the news on another, much lower profile, domaine/vines purchase in Burgundy – that of the Château de la Commaraine in Pommard, and it’s 3.75 hectare monopoly of the Clos de la Commaraine – Pommard 1er Cru, no less. The sellers were the Jaboulet-Vercherre family, the wine having been made, for some time, by Louis Jadot.

At first sight, this is also an expensive acquisition – approaching a million euros per hectare – for ‘only’ 1er cru land, and relatively under the radar premier cru land at that – we are not talking Rugiens here. It is not simply a vineyard purchase though, there is a (externally, at least) fine-looking château included in the price, a building that alone would have an asking price over €1 million. Gotti notes that the new owners plan this to be a luxury leisure retreat, so their strategy is as much about oenotourisme (the local buzzword for a couple of years now) as it is about wine.

So it seems that with the Château de la Commaraine, plus the Château de Pommard, Pommard is to become the new chic destination of jet-setters – I trust that all the new château owners have bullet-proof marketing projections 🙂

Edit, 18 Nov 2017
One week later, much more info here, via Decanter…

…everyone is buying up land in Macon, Beaujolais and even the Jura is becoming fashionable, but methinks Jadot are a little slower than, say, Drouhin in this case. It’s anyway a nice ‘retirement’ project for Jacques!

I’d seen the construction work since at least July 2012 – it could have been June – but what exactly was going on with those earth-movers up the Chemin des Argillières above the Clos l’Arlot in Nuits St.Georges?

This week I managed to quiz a few locals and an interesting, indeed amazing story was relayed – though let’s be clear, it’s just their ‘story’: This is a vineyard that has been ‘constructed’ – it simply wasn’t there last year – but this is construction on an industrial scale.

Apparently some old building(s?) at the foot of the ancient (1500-1700s or probably older(?)) stone quarry had been bought by a resident of Dijon – who came originally from Premeaux. With hundreds of tonnes of materials he has filled in the space and made a reasonable slope upto what was previously just a stone cliff-face. The basic platform that now waits for vines looks very stony – not much organic material – but has had a ‘faux historic’ entrance and steps constructed as an entrance-way. Only when you look at the southern side of the ‘platform’ do you realise what has actually been done here.

There are a couple of other matters too: This piece of land has no AOC, despite bordering the premier crus of Clos de l’Arlot and Les Argillières. The locals are also far from supportive of the ‘land’ getting an AOC – today even Bourgogne Rouge or Blanc is not allowed. One of the reasons why it might be hard to be awarded AOC could be that it’s not entirely clear where the ‘land-fill’ has come from! However, I suppose that they could ignore AOC completely and make a ‘vin de table’! There is just one more pertinent (I think) point: The buyer, and instigator of this project is apparently aged about 85 years old – so not likely to be drinking any of the wine that this platform may (or may not) ever produce! It is said that a son-in-law could eventually benefit…

oops – fallen off the end of the ‘platform’