Domaine de Courcel: Producer profile and 10 wines tasted

Fashion is funny. It ebbs and flows, sometimes in both directions at the same time. Domaine de Courcel seems like an enigma, popular and well-respected in France, while often ignored or damned with faint praise in the anglophone press.

Recent visits with estate manager Yves Confuron have convinced me of the need to put this to rights. Confuron is a breath of fresh air, with his wry sense of humour and readiness to follow his vision in pursuit of monumental wines that will stand the test of time.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for 10 Domaine de Courcel wines

That is his intention, and he succeeds marvellously well. Today’s fashion is to produce wines dominated by accessible fruit expression in their youth: drinkable, supple, silky-textured wines. Some refer to this type of wine as ‘glou-glou’, but this is not the vision at Domaine de Courcel (or at the Confuron family estate), where substantial wines are built for ageing – one might say the ‘anti-glou-glou’. But if anything, Burgundy is a big tent, and there is room for more than one style of wine.

Pommard generally has suffered a reputation for rustic wines – or worse. In his book Grand Cru, Remington Norman writes: ‘Pommard’s wines are too often coarse and uninspiring.’ As usual with generalisations, this is, at best, a simplification. The village has been celebrated for centuries for its mix of power, nuance and complexity.

Location is everything. Pommard is nestled into the valley of the stream called L’Avant-Dheune. On the northern flank lies the Montagne de Pommard; to the south, the Côte de Volnay. The geology is fairly complex, but the essence is that the best premier crus lie at the front of this valley, along the central axis of the Côte de Beaune, with Epenots to the north and Rugiens to the south. The alluvial fan deposited by the Avant-Dheune spills underneath Epenots, while the soil of Rugiens has more clay, and in broad strokes this is why the sites on the north side of town generally produce wines that have more finesse and elegance, while those on the south give more power and tannin.

Nearly half of Domaine de Courcel’s vineyards are located in Epenots. They once owned the entire 8ha Grand Clos des Epenots, which lies south of the border with Beaune. Despite its name, the clos lies entirely within the lieu-dit of Petits Epenots, next to the monopole of Comte Armand called Clos des Epeneaux, whose vines are also mostly in Petits Epenots but extend to 0.61ha of Grands Epenots. The de Courcel family found it necessary in 1975 to sell three of the eight hectares to settle estate transmission issues, but they still own an impressive 4.89ha of this vineyard, which has an average of 60-80cm of clay with limestone pebbles.

Confuron has established a plot-by-plot parcellaire approach for this magnificent site, growing the grapes and making the wine separately in three main sections and blending them before bottling. Perhaps the most distinctive, according to him, is the southern part, which he describes as ‘tougher, with heavier soils and a higher clay content – not the same terroir at all’. This section borders the Comte Armand vineyard. Next is the parcel sold to Château de Meursault, and on the other side the portions at the top of the slope and those at the base are worked separately because of the age of the vines.

The remaining vineyards lie south of the village and at the top of the slope. They own just over a hectare in Rugiens-Hauts. The parcel is located mid-slope in clay and marl soils that vary in depth from 20cm at the top to almost a metre at the base. The facile view is that Rugiens-Bas is better than Rugiens-Haut, although earlier classifications of Pommard, such as the map produced in 1861 by the Beaune Committee of Agriculture, do not distinguish in quality between the lower part of Rugiens-Haut and Rugiens-Bas. Indeed, some authorities, such as Clive Coates, felt that the Rugiens from de Courcel was the superior wine, but those who prefer elegance to power might well prefer the Epenots.

The other domaine vineyards include 0.79ha of premier cru Frémiers, downslope from Rugiens and near the border with Volnay Fremiets – the soils here are 60-80cm deep, with more clay than Rugiens. There is also 0.58ha of premier cru Croix Noires, just north of Frémiers (also downslope from Rugiens). In addition, Domaine de Courcel owns 1.44ha of village-level Vaumuriens, which lies up the slope from Rugiens and features thinner soils and a northeast exposure. To complete the array of vineyards are 1.73ha classified as regional Bourgogne, including three plots of Pinot Noir at the very top of the slope and some Chardonnay planted further out into the plain east of the village.

Domaine de Courcel traces its origins back four hundred years, but since the estate has been inherited through the feminine line several times, the proprietor’s surnames have changed over the years. The vineyards of the domaine were owned by the Lejeune family at the time Dr Lavalle wrote his 1855 book, Histoire et Statistique de la Vignes des Grands Vins de la Côte d’Or, and by the time of Danguey et Aubertin’s 1892 publication, Les Grands Vins de Bourgogne, the family name was de Barbuat.

Gilles de Courcel took over in 1976 for his aunt, who had run the estate since the death of Madame Bernard de Courcel in 1951, a descendant of the Lejeune family. When he arrived, the family had entrusted the work of the domaine to an estate manager (régisseur) named Yves Tavant, who had been appointed in 1971 and whose father and grandfather had fulfilled the same role. The wines under Tavant had a good reputation, and Gilles de Courcel began to make changes slowly. Until his arrival, all of the wine had been sold to négociants, but from 1976 de Courcel began to bottle an ever-increasing proportion of the production at the winery.

Yves Tavant retired in 1996 and was replaced by Yves Confuron. He is the son of Jack Confuron-Cotéditot, and he runs the domaine of that name today with his brother Jean-Pierre. Both brothers are oenologists; Jean-Pierre Confuron worked with Gilles de Courcel at Domaine Chanson, which de Courcel ran for 14 years, while his younger brother is the régisseur of Domaine de Courcel.

The work in the vines is meticulous: ‘Organic, but without certification,’ Confuron specifies. Yield is kept low by pruning short, debudding and green harvesting when needed. He is known for picking late. In 2022, the harvest began at Domaine de Courcel on 10 September. According to Confuron: ‘If you’re going to extract, you need a bit of tannin.’ The grapes are rigorously sorted in the vineyard and again on a sorting table.

The grapes are fermented in the winery as whole clusters after a cold maceration. Confuron is particularly fond of this method because the grapes ferment at a lower temperature because of the stems. Paradoxically, Confuron explains that the stem tannins from whole-bunch fermentation amount to only about 5% of the total tannins in the finished wine. The fermenting grapes are punched down, but only at the end of the fermentation and devatting takes place as soon as the wine is dry. All of the press wine is assembled with the free run juice.

The resulting wine is complex, with dark fruit accented with earthy, meaty, savoury notes and hints of saline minerals on the finish. The length of maturation is determined according to the individual vintages but can often run 21–24 months in barrel (one-third new). The wines are not customarily racked during ageing and are bottled without fining or filtration.

Confuron thinks that market demands can often bring the wines to market too early. The style of wine that he is crafting at the Domaine de Courcel is seen less and less often today and harks back to an earlier time in Burgundy’s history. It is a majestic style that requires patience to appreciate but rewards with power and complexity. It will not be to everyone’s liking, but it is a style everyone should try.

See notes and scores from Charles Curtis MW for 10 Domaine de Courcel wines

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