Domaine Liger-Belair makes its first Clos Vougeot grand cru

Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair will be adding a Clos Vougeot grand cru to its output from the 2015 vintage.

The Vosne-Romanée-based estate makes wine from 12 appellations, including Échezeaux Grand Cru and the monopole of La Romanée – the smallest AOC in France at 0.8452 hectares.

Louis-Michel Liger-Belair, the seventh generation of the Liger-Belair family to make wine in Burgundy, is renting a 70-are plot (or 0.7 hectares) of organically-farmed grapes which is the equivalent to three barrels or around 900 bottles of wine.

The Liger-Belair family was one of five producers to own the 50 hectare Clos Vougeot in the 19th and early 20th century, until it was further split and sold over the following decades.

Today Clos Vougeot has around 80 owners.

Liger-Belair began vinifying a plot of vines in Échezeaux in 2006, another grand cru that is split between numerous – up to 84 – owners, and sees Clos Vougeot as a similar opportunity.

‘The agreement for renting the grapes is for an initial period of ten years’, Liger-Belair told decanter.com.

‘And we have already begun applying the biodynamic treatments that we use across our vines. Clos Vougeot is an historic grand cru, emblematic of Burgundy. It is often undervalued, but I firmly believe that it is not the quality of the terroir that varies, but that of the winemaking’.