laurent ponsot
Laurent Ponsot at the Rudy Kurniawan trial in New York, December 2013.
(Image credit: Stan Honda / AFP / Getty)

Laurent Ponsot, winemaker at the prestigious Domaine Ponsot, has confirmed that he will leave his family estate to set up on his own in Burgundy.

Laurent Ponsot, the famous Domaine Ponsot winemaker in Burgundy, will create his own entity and leave the family estate.

‘The official reason is that I’m at retirement age but I don’t want to retire,’ he said to Decanter.com. ‘I want to create something new with my oldest son, Clément.’

Laurent Ponsot will still retain 25% ownership of Domaine Ponsot. His sisters, Rose-Marie, Catherine and Stéphanie, own the other 75%.

‘I own some vineyards,’ Ponsot said. He has decided to create a négociant business in his own name, buying in grapes from friends, too. ‘I’ll have an involvement in the vineyard, so as not to be merely a buyer of grapes. A real joint venture,’ he said.

‘The word “négoce” is not a bad one; without négoce or maison, Burgundy would not be Burgundy,’ he added.

The Ponsot business and winery will be based in the village of Gilly-les-Citeaux, in the Vougeot area and labelled in Vougeot itself.

A few wines could be released later this year, but the first proper tranche of Laurent Ponsot wines are set to be released in 2019, from the 2017 vintage. ‘I own a few wines from 2015 but I prefer to wait a little and market them, maybe, by the end of the year,’ he said.

Ponsot is also writing a book about his part in the downfall of wine fraudster Rudy Kurniawan, currently serving a 10-year prison sentence in the US. Ponsot helped the FBI prosecute Kurniawan and is famous in the story for flying across the Atlantic to personally intervene at an auction involving Kurniawan wines. Publication is scheduled for the end of the year; ‘if I have time to finish writing’, he said.

The Laurent Ponsot reds line-up contains Chambertin, Clos St-Denis, Griotte-Chambertin, Chambolle Musigny and 1er Cru Les Charmes and Gevrey Chambertin. White wines include Montrachet, Corton-Charlemagne, Meursault Genevrières, Meursault Charmes, Meursault Perrières, St-Romain and Blagny, he confirmed.

Editing by Chris Mercer

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Yohan Castaing
Yohan Castaing
Decanter Magazine and DWWA Judge

Bordeaux native Yohan Castaing is a freelance journalist, based in France. He reviews wines from the Loire, Languedoc, Roussillon, Provence, southwest France and Champagne houses for The Wine Advocate. He founded Anthocyanes, a French wine guide, and Velvety Tannins, a guide to the wines of the Rhône Valley. He also writes for wine publications including Gault&Millau and Jancis Robinson. Castaing has held a variety of positions in the wine industry such as wine buyer and marketing director. He was a wine marketing consultant and the author of several books about wine marketing and wine tourism before, in 2011, he became a full-time freelance wine journalist focusing on the industry and wine reviews.